Investor Connect Podcast

How Not To Email an Investor Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. Founders raising funding can use cold email outreach to find investors. In emailing an investor for your fundraise avoid the following mistakes: Start the email by telling your entire story in one go. Investors want to know what it's about before committ...

How To Email an Investor Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. Founders raising funding can use cold email outreach to find investors. In emailing an investor for your fundraise consider the following: Research the investor and include key details in the email to show you have done so. Make the subject line informative...

Price Elasticity Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. Price elasticity measures how much a price increase will decrease overall revenue. If an increase in price results in no reduction in revenue then the price is considered inelastic. Test your product's price elasticity by increasing the price by 10% then measure the...

On this episode of Investor Connect, Hall welcomes Michael Cardamone, CEO and General Partner at Forum Ventures. Located in New York, NY, USA, Forum Ventures is the leading early-stage fund, program, and community for B2B SaaS startups. Founded in 2014 as Acceleprise, they are on a mission to make the B2B SaaS journey easier, more accessible, and successful for early-stage founders, through pre-se...

Per Seat vs per Use Pricing Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. Many SaaS businesses use either per-seat or per-use pricing. Per seat pricing offers a fixed price for the customer making it easy to budget. It also provides a consistent revenue stream for the provider especially when applied with annual contracts. Per-...

Premium Pricing Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. Premium pricing sets the price well above the competition for a product. Use this pricing model to signal luxury. It's the counter strategy to value pricing which offers the most product features for the least amount of money. Premium pricing positions the product as...

Volume Pricing Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. Volume pricing offers a discount for products or services bought in volume. Traditionally a discount was justified if a customer bought ten or more units of a product because the cost of sales was lower. Sellers used it as an incentive to encourage larger order sizes....

Bundle Pricing Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. Bundle pricing sets the price on a package of services that is lower than if you bought each service individually. This generates more demand for the product since the price is lower. It can increase sales because the product bundle has more features and usability tha...

Dynamic Pricing Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. Dynamic pricing varies the price based on the current supply and demand. This pricing can be used to increase the price when demand is high and then lower it when supply catches up. This is often used in ride-sharing services which charge more during the rush hour. T...

On this episode of Investor Connect, Hall welcomes José Luis Silva, Co-founder and Managing Partner at Dux Capital. Located in Austin, Texas, USA, Dux Capital is a standout in American venture capital, prioritizing early-stage Latinx-led startups to counter the disproportionate funding gap they face. Committed to fostering diversity, equity, and inclusion, Dux Capital empowers underrepresented voi...

Freemium Pricing Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. The freemium pricing model is used to expedite customer adoption of the product. Many companies use this as part of a tiered pricing model. The freemium model gives users some experience with the product. These are the advantages of a freemium model: It's easy to im...

Flat-Rate Pricing Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. Flat rate pricing is the simplest pricing model. There's one price for the product or service no matter what features are included or how often the product is used. It acts similarly to the traditional software licensing model. It's often used as a premium pricing...

Tiered Pricing Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. Tiered pricing offers multiple price points for a product with varying levels of functionality or service. It is the most often used pricing model. The advantage of tiered pricing is as follows: It gives the user multiple options to choose from. The better the fit to...

Number of User-Based Pricing Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. The number of user-based pricing sets the price based on users. This works for enterprise customers where there are a number of workers who need to access the platform. This makes it easy to forecast and budget the cost of the product. The downside is th...

Usage-based pricing Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. Usage-based pricing focuses on how much of the product or service the customer uses. The more the customer uses the product the greater the price they will pay. To apply usage-based pricing to your product, identify your value metric and then assign a price to it...

On this episode of Investor Connect, Hall welcomes Anthony Santaro (Venture Capital Associate) & Somak Chattopadhyay (Founder and managing Partner) at Armory Square Ventures. Located in Syracuse, New York, USA, Armory Square Ventures provides the first round of institutional capital for companies targeting the largest industries across New York State and select emerging cities across the Northeast...

Value-Based Pricing Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. Value-based pricing focuses on what value the customer derives from the product rather than the cost for the producer to build and deliver it. This pricing model focuses on how the customer perceives the product and what problem it solves for them. To apply value...

Promotional Pricing Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. Promotional pricing gives your product an immediate sales boost. This is often used around holidays and special events. Offering a flash sale or a short time-only discount can generate some immediate revenue for your business. Holiday specials can also be used to...

Competitor-Based Pricing Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. In pricing your product consider the competition. In well-established markets where the competition is entrenched, you may need to set the price in the same range as the competition. Review the competitors for their pricing structure. Take note of the price...

Good Better Best Pricing Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. In pricing your product consider the Good, Better, Best model This model gives you three price points with which to cover the market. The Good price is set to capture the low end of the market. The key here is the core feature the customer wants and will pay...

How To Price a SaaS Product Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. Pricing a SaaS product is different from a traditional product. A SaaS customer pays on a recurring basis such as every month or year. Since the customer is paying for a service for a period of time, then the price must reflect that usage. There are two p...

On this episode of Investor Connect, Hall welcomes Tanika De Souza, CEO at High Octane Teams (HOT). HOT is an offshore staffing agency, focused on systemizing your process to streamline growth. It is focused on hiring Virtual International Staff to fit the client's specific needs and company culture. Their VAs come in to not only handle the workload but to help clients systemize and document their...

Price Comes Before Product Development Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. Most startups build a product and only then start a discussion with customers about how much they will pay for it. The pricing discussion should come before product development. In fact, the decision to build the product will depend on how much...

Calculating Your Value Metric Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. Your value proposition is what the customer is buying from you. Stating it in unit economic terms is called your value metric. It could be storage space usage, transactions on a marketplace or other. Sometimes the metric is clearly assessed such as traf...

Identifying Your Customer Profiles Hello, this is Hall T. Martin with the Startup Funding Espresso -- your daily shot of startup funding and investing. Your value proposition is what the customer is buying from you which drives the pricing for your product. In setting the price for your product first segment your customers and identify their personas and how they will use the product. Figure out t...