Price and package a product

To: CEO From: Head of Product Re: Alternative to a 30% January increase

Recommendation

Don't apply a flat 30%. Move pricing from seats with unlimited pages to a model that charges for pages. Self-serve keeps seats but adds an included page allowance and a per-page overage. Enterprise moves to a committed per-page rate at renewal. At current usage, this takes gross margin from 24% to about 53%.

Tom's increase would not get us to 41%. That figure assumes all contracts reprice in January, and only one enterprise contract renews then. Self-serve-only in January gives about 34%.

What the data says

• The margin problem is enterprise. Six contracts account for 71% of pages (19.4M of 27.4M) and 71% of serving cost ($23.2k of $32.9k a month). They pay $19.0k, so they lose $4.2k a month (−22%). Four of six are negative.
• Enterprise pays too little per page. Effective rates run $0.0007 to $0.0015 per page against a serving cost of $0.0012. Seat pricing lets page volume grow without any increase in what we charge. Northwind's pages tripled in a year and its bill didn't move.
• Self-serve is healthy. It runs at 60% margin. Startups are at 87%, and mid-market is at 40%, dragged down by heavy accounts. Q and P are negative.
• We are far below market. DocuLens lists at $0.012 per page up to 1M and $0.008 above, plus a $500 platform fee. At that list price, Northwind's 4.8M pages would cost about $43k a month, against our $3.2k. Enterprise discounts narrow this gap, but not by much.

Proposed model

• Self-serve: $99 per seat per month, including 25,000 pages per seat. $0.002 per page above that. Seats stay because they are simple and match Formwise. Our overage rate is one-fifth of Formwise's $0.01.
• Enterprise: a committed monthly page volume at $0.002 per page, with overage at the same rate. No seat fee. Offered on two-year terms with a price lock.
• Floor: $0.0017 per page. Anything below it needs CEO sign-off.

Because serving cost is falling about 10% a quarter, a locked rate becomes more profitable each quarter. If that holds, enterprise margin reaches about 60% within a year at current volume.

Effect by segment

Monthly run-rate at current usage, before churn, at $0.0012 per page.

Gross margin dollars rise from $10.2k to $36.9k a month. Startups barely change because most use less than 25k pages per seat. Mid-market carries the most self-serve risk: a few heavy accounts see large increases, such as Q ($594 to $1,382) and T ($792 to $1,498).

Getting there

Self-serve. Announce in January and take effect February 1 with 30 days' notice. New sign-ups get the new model immediately. For existing heavy mid-market accounts, cap the increase at 50% for the first three months. Offer annual prepay as an option.

Enterprise, by renewal date. No contract is repriced mid-term.

• Copperfield (January 2027): $0.002 per page takes it from $2.4k to about $4.8k a month. This is the first test of the model.
• Northwind (February 2027): Its ask is "two years at the same rate." At the same dollar amount, the effective rate would fall to about $0.0007 per page while volume triples. Counter with a two-year term, a committed 4.8M pages a month, $0.0017 in year one, and $0.002 in year two. That is about $8.2k a month in year one. Trade the rate for term and commitment. If they refuse to go below $0.0017, let them walk. They lose us $2.6k a month today, and losing them would improve gross margin dollars.
• Arcadia (March 2027): It is evaluating a competitor and is the only enterprise account with positive margin ($528 a month). Offer $0.002, benchmark against ExtractIQ at their volume, and concede only down to the floor and only on a multi-year deal.
• Halden (June), Meridian (September), Brightwater (November): standard $0.002.

The price test

The test's B arm was $129 against $99, which is a 30% increase. That makes it the most relevant evidence we have, and it doesn't support the January increase.

• The result is inconclusive. Conversion was 5.0% against 4.8%. The 95% interval on the difference is roughly −1.7 to +2.1 points. That interval can't rule out losing a third of conversion. "Not significant" does not mean "no effect."
• The assignment looks broken. The arms received 1,240 and 870 visitors against a 50/50 design. That is a sample-ratio mismatch (chi-square ≈ 65). Until someone explains it, we can't trust either arm.
• Its scope is narrow. It ran two weeks over the holidays, measured new sign-ups only, and counted first payments only. It says nothing about existing customers, seat expansion, churn, or heavy page users.

We shouldn't cite it as cover. Rerun it properly: a six-week randomized 50/50 test of the new model on new sign-ups, plus a notice-based read on existing self-serve accounts.

Why not 30% across the board

• It doesn't fix enterprise. A 30% increase moves enterprise from −22% to about 6% margin. Even then, it can't be applied mid-term.
• Seats don't track cost. Serving cost is about $13 per seat for startups and about $480 per seat for Northwind. A per-seat increase raises both sides equally and leaves the mismatch in place.
• It taxes the wrong customers. Light users absorb the same percentage increase as heavy users, while the heavy users are the ones we under-recover on.

Risks

• Enterprise pushback. A roughly 2x jump at renewal is the real risk. Expect one or two losses. The two-year lock and staggered renewal calendar limit the damage.
• Cost decline stalls. If serving cost stops falling, the $0.0017 floor needs review each quarter.
• Usage shifts. Heavy self-serve users may trim usage to avoid overage. That is acceptable given the margin, but we should watch conversion closely.

Decisions requested

1. Reject the flat 30% increase.
2. Approve the self-serve model effective February 1, with a 90-day cap for heavy mid-market accounts.
3. Approve the enterprise per-page rate card, with a $0.0017 floor and CEO sign-off required below it.
4. Rerun the price test properly before any new-signup price change.

MEMORANDUM

TO: Chief Executive Officer FROM: Head of Product, Parsewell DATE: October 24, 2024 SUBJECT: Alternative Pricing Model vs. Tom’s 30% Across-the-Board Increase

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1. Assessment of the Growth Team’s Price Test

Tom’s reliance on the December price test to justify a blanket 30% price hike is dangerously flawed. The test suffered from two fatal errors: 1. Sample Selection & Volume Discrepancy: Arm A ($99) attracted 1,240 visitors, while Arm B ($129) attracted only 870 visitors—a 30% drop in top-of-funnel capture. This points to a broken traffic allocation or immediate audience suppression at the higher price point. 2. Confounding Variables: Running a pricing test during December (8th–21st) captures holiday-shortened enterprise/developer activity, creating noise that masks true price elasticity.

While a 30% seat price increase showed a statistically insignificant conversion dip over a two-week window, applying that logic to usage or enterprise contracts ignores reality. Parsewell is an infrastructure API. Developers do not buy seats for fun; they buy seats to build systems that process millions of pages. Tying our revenue strictly to developer seats while our core cost driver—and customer value metric—is document volume is a structural mismatch.

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2. The Current State: Margin Erosion & Value Leakage

An analysis of our usage export reveals why Tom is panicking about gross margins (currently sitting at roughly 24% overall): * The Enterprise Subsidy: Our 6 Enterprise accounts processed 19.16 million pages last month (79% of total company volume) but generated only $18,600 in revenue. Because they enjoy "unlimited pages" tied to discounted seat licenses, their heavy usage swamps our inference costs ($0.0012/page). Consequently, 4 out of 6 Enterprise accounts have negative gross margins, costing us thousands monthly (e.g., Northwind Logistics loses $2,584/month). * The Self-Serve Engine: Mid-market and Startup tiers are healthy, generating positive gross margins because their volume scales predictably with seat counts.

A flat 30% seat hike fixes nothing for Enterprise: adding 30% to Northwind’s $3,200/month bill reduces their negative margin, but they still bleed cash because they process 4.8 million pages for a flat fee.

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3. The Alternative Pricing Model: Value-Based Usage Tiers

To fix gross margins structurally, we must decouple our monetization from developer seats and align it with the metric that drives our costs and customer value: processed pages.

We propose launching Parsewell V2 on January 1: 1. Self-Serve (Startups & Mid-market): Retain the base seat fee ($99/seat/month) to cover dashboard access, but introduce a generous included page allowance (50,000 pages/seat/month) with a clear, predictable overage rate of $0.005 per page. 2. Enterprise Contracts: Move away from flat seat-license bundles. Transition to a Platform Fee + Usage Model modeled after industry standards (competing with DocuLens/ExtractIQ): * Base Platform Fee: $1,500/month (includes dashboard, SSO, priority support, and 250k pages). * Overage / Metered Rate: $0.008 per page for all volume exceeding the base allowance.

#### Financial Impact Summary (Based on Last 30 Days Data) * Current Monthly Revenue: ~$41,000 | Current Cost to Serve: ~$31,000 | Current Gross Margin: ~24% * New Model Monthly Revenue: ~$81,500 | New Cost to Serve: ~$31,000 | New Gross Margin: ~62%

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4. Segment-by-Segment Impact & Table

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5. Execution Strategy & Enterprise Renewals

Transitioning self-serve is straightforward via a Stripe billing update with a 30-day grandfathering notice. Enterprise renewals require a tactical playbook to prevent churn, especially with accounts like Arcadia Health evaluating competitors.

• Copperfield Freight (Renews Jan 2027): Their contract is up immediately in January. We will introduce the new usage-based framework during December QBR. Position the $0.008/page rate against competitor DocuLens ($0.012/page) to show they are still getting a volume discount.
• Northwind Logistics (Renews Feb 2027): They want a 2-year renewal at the same rate despite a 3x volume surge. Do not accept. Counter-offer: Honor the flat seat rate for 12 months only if they agree to a volume cap of 2M pages/month, with overages billed at $0.008/page thereafter. Otherwise, transition them directly to the new platform + usage model.
• Arcadia Health (Renews Mar 2027 - Evaluating Competitor): Because they are price-sensitive and shopping around, offer a transitional "Volume Partnership Discount": a lower platform fee ($1,000) for Q1 while locking them into a 2-year tiered page commitment.

Conclusion

Tom wants a blunt instrument (30% across the board) to solve a surgical problem. A flat 30% price hike leaves money on the table for high-volume users while alienating self-serve customers. Our value-based usage model repairs our gross margins to over 60%, prices our heavy enterprise users fairly based on the compute power they consume, and keeps us competitively positioned against ExtractIQ and DocuLens.

Parsewell pricing: an alternative to a flat 30% increase

To: CEO | From: Head of Product

Recommendation

Tom has correctly identified the margin problem but proposes the wrong fix. We don't charge for pages, and pages are the only thing that costs us money. I recommend we keep seats for self-serve, add a page allowance with overage, and price enterprise per page. At today's volumes this takes gross margin from 24% to 42%. Startups pay nothing extra, and margin keeps rising as cost per page falls. A 30% increase reaches 41% on paper, but only if nobody churns and we could reprice contracts in January. We can't. And it leaves the cause in place.

Where the margin went

All figures come from the 30-day export (80 accounts, 27.4M pages, $43,057 revenue, $32,903 cost to serve).

• Enterprise is underwater. It earns $0.00098 per page against a cost of $0.0012, a gross margin of −22%. Northwind and Halden alone lose $4,736 a month.
• Mid-market makes 41%. Three accounts (P, Q, V) lose money because a few seats push heavy volume.
• Startups make 87%. They are not the problem.

Seats don't track cost. Northwind's pages tripled in a year on the same contract. Cost per page falls about 34% a year (10% a quarter), but volume growth of that size outruns it. That is how margin fell from 41% to 24%.

The model

Why this shape:

• Startups: no startup exceeds 50k pages per seat, so the change is invisible to them. That protects the funnel against Formwise at $79.
• Mid-market: overage lands only on the accounts that cost us.
• Enterprise: a single per-page rate with no volume discount, because our cost is linear in pages.

Margin over time: at $0.0015, enterprise margin is 20% at today's cost and about 48% by late 2027 if the cost trend holds. Unlike today, revenue grows with volume.

Competitive position: $0.0015 is deliberately conservative. DocuLens's public price for Northwind's volume would be about $43,000 a month, against $7,230 under this model. We stay the cheapest option for every mid-market account too. Account V (3 seats, 346k pages) would pay $885 with us, $2,197 at Formwise and about $4,650 at DocuLens.

Enterprise renewals

Contracts can't be repriced mid-term. A January increase on "contracts" would reach only Copperfield. We move each account at renewal.

Northwind. "Same rate for two years" means unlimited pages for $38,400 a year. If their growth continues, they reach roughly 14M pages a month. Even after two more years of cost decline, that would lose us about $100k a year.

• Offer: two years at $0.0015, stepping down to $0.0013 in year two. This gives them the price certainty they want while we keep a margin on growth.
• Walk-away point: we should be willing to lose them. Northwind and Halden leaving would cut $5,800 a month of revenue but raise gross profit by $4,736 a month. That fact sets our walk-away point; it isn't a threat to put in front of them.

Arcadia already pays $0.00136 per page and is looking at a competitor.

• Offer: hold them at $54k for 12 months covering up to 3.6M pages a month, with $0.0015 above that.
• Discovery: competitors' public prices are far above ours, so we should find out what is really driving the evaluation before assuming it's price.

Phasing. Full enterprise effect arrives with the November renewal. Margin climbs through 2027 rather than jumping in January.

Self-serve rollout

1. January: new sign-ups get the new plan. Existing accounts get an in-dashboard usage meter showing their allowance.
2. Notice: existing accounts get 60 days' notice, with overage billing from April.
3. Personal outreach to five accounts: I, P, Q, T and V see increases of 58% to 198%. We contact each one and offer a committed annual page pack at $0.002.
4. Worst case: if all five churned, we lose $2,433 a month of new gross profit. Blended margin would still be about 41%.

The price test

The test doesn't support a 30% increase, for the following reasons.

1. The split is broken. It was meant to be 50/50 but came out 1,240 vs 870 visitors (59/41). The chance of that happening randomly is effectively zero (χ² ≈ 65). Something in assignment or tracking failed, possibly losing B-arm visitors who bounced. Until that is explained, neither arm's numbers can be trusted.
2. "Not significant" doesn't mean "no effect." With 104 conversions, the 95% confidence interval on the difference runs from −2.0 to +1.7 points. The data are consistent with a 40% drop in conversion.
3. The timing and measure are weak. It ran for two holiday weeks and measured first payment only, not retention or seat growth.
4. It covered the wrong customers for this decision. It tested new self-serve sign-ups at $129. It says nothing about existing customers or enterprise contracts. Enterprise buyers will ask for the evidence, and citing this test for their increase would hurt our credibility at exactly the renewals that matter.

At face value, B shows higher revenue per visitor ($6.23 vs $4.95). That makes the test worth rerunning, not acting on. A valid rerun needs:

• a fixed split;
• four or more weeks;
• 60-day paid retention as the success measure;
• the new allowance plan as one of the arms.

Compared with a flat 30%

Decisions needed

1. Approve the model and the $0.0015 enterprise rate.
2. Authorize the walk-away position on Northwind and Halden.
3. Ask Growth to diagnose the split failure before any test result is cited.

I'd like Tom in the room for the first two. His margin target is right, and this model reaches it faster and keeps it.