Mostly metrics
Run the Numbers
Decoding Pricing Strategy with Blue Rocket’s Founder & CEO Jason Kap
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Decoding Pricing Strategy with Blue Rocket’s Founder & CEO Jason Kap

In this episode, CJ is joined by Jason Kap, the founder and CEO of Blue Rocket, a world-renowned pricing consultancy for top enterprise tech companies like Salesforce, Cisco, PagerDuty, Brex, and GitLab. Jason discusses the invaluable experience he gained working at Microsoft under Bill Gates in the early 2000s, including his role in the canonical antitrust case. Then he takes a deep dive into all things pricing, covering where in the organization pricing should sit, how often companies should update their pricing models, his philosophy on discounting, how CFOs can better work with sales teams to determine pricing ranges, the role of framing and psychology in how a deal is presented in price to the end consumer, and how this all relates to corporate strategy.

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TIMESTAMPS:

(00:00) Preview and Intro

(02:21) Sponsor - Maxio | NetSuite

(05:27) Microsoft Culture in the Early 2000s

(08:06) Pricing and Packaging the Microsoft Office Suite

(10:30) The Antitrust Law and Consent Decree

(12:34) The Project That Jason Shot Down

(14:58) Online Services and the Origin of SaaS

(17:54) Managing Big Projects: the “No Delegation Rule”

(19:18) Sponsor - Mercury

(20:39) Decisions in Pricing: Company Strategy, Segmentation, Financial Strength

(22:43) Ideal Location for Pricing Within an Organization

(25:02) Repackaging Products and Considering Competition

(26:53) An Introduction to Value-based Pricing

(32:15) Challenges in Competitor Comparison and Pricing

(35:58) An Explanation of Non-price Terms

(41:55) Jason’s Philosophy of Discounting

(48:52) Evolving Your Discounting Strategy Over Time

(50:53) Frameworks for Discounting: The Pricing Maturity Model

(51:49) Discounting for Different Macro Environments

(55:04) Anecdotes from Jason’s Career

(1:00:51) Wrap

Discussion about this podcast

Mostly metrics
Run the Numbers
Run the Numbers is a twice-weekly podcast about financial metrics and business models, designed for ambitious people operating tech startups. It's a collection of things host CJ Gustafson (CFO at Partstech and writer of Mostly Metrics) has learned and thought about in the trenches as a tech CFO.
This show is meant to serve as a playbook of sorts for the stuff CJ wishes he knew earlier in his career, both from experience and from copying people smarter than himself.
Topics frequently touch upon Startup SaaS Metrics, Annual Budgeting, Financial Forecasting, Headcount, Equity, Dilution, and Fundraising – and how all of these drive business performance and growth.