pricing-packagingdraft
Pricing & Packaging Strategy: Curator
Executive Summary
The defining pricing question for Curator is not the number, it's the payer — coach, client, or corporate sponsor — and the page itself flags this as unresolved. The recommended path: price per-coach seat (subscription) as the default monetization, because the coach is the wedge buyer and the value (reclaimed hours, trusted output) accrues to them; keep the client side free during an active engagement to avoid taxing the coach's relationship. Treat all price points as discovery targets, not commitments — willingness-to-pay is currently unmeasured (no evidence tier above T6). Do not publish a price before the pilot returns WTP signal.
Model Selection
- Recommended: per-coach seat subscription (monthly/annual), possibly with a light usage guardrail (sessions/month) to align cost with the multi-call pipeline.
- Why: aligns with B2B2C wedge (coach pays for their own productivity); predictable; simplest to communicate.
- Rejected for now: per-client/per-session pricing (penalizes the core behavior — running more sessions); pure usage-based (cost-anxiety suppresses the habit we want to build); freemium (premature before value/trust proven).
- Expansion later: seat-based for schools (multi-seat) and an ROI/reporting tier for corporate sponsors.
Willingness-to-Pay Assessment (evidence-flagged)
| Segment |
WTP signal |
Evidence quality |
Note |
| Solo/boutique coach |
unknown |
none (T6 inference) |
Coaches pay for sessions at high rates → some headroom, but unproven for tooling |
| School/academy |
unknown |
none |
Channel/volume economics differ |
| Corporate sponsor |
unknown |
none |
Pays for ROI reporting, not the tool per se |
| All WTP is unmeasured — flagged. The first pilot job includes a pricing-discovery conversation. |
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Competitive Price-Value Map (qualitative)
- Transcribers/notetakers: low monthly per-seat; high commoditization → Curator must price above them and justify it with the methodology/trust value, not transcription.
- Generic LLM subscriptions: very low; the "free alternative" anchor that suppresses WTP — the battle is value perception, not price.
- Coaching practice-management tools: per-seat subscriptions → a reasonable reference band for a coach's tooling budget.
Package Architecture (Good / Better / Best — provisional)
| Tier |
For |
Includes |
Rationale |
| Good |
Solo coach |
Session loop: transcript, reproducible analysis, editable summary |
The core value, accessible entry |
| Better |
Growing coach |
+ cumulative dossier, commitment/micro-tracking, out-of-scope alerts |
Continuity = retention driver |
| Best |
School / multi-coach / sponsor |
+ multi-seat admin, progress/ROI reporting |
Channel + expansion revenue |
Sensitivity Analysis (structure only — no real price yet)
Revenue ≈ seats × price × retention. At concept stage, ±10/20/30% modeling is withheld because the base price is unknown; reporting numbers would be fabrication. Populate after pilot WTP discovery.
Implementation Plan
- Pilot: likely free or nominal to remove adoption friction and to learn WTP honestly.
- v1: introduce seat price informed by pilot; grandfather pilot coaches.
- Communication: lead with value (hours reclaimed, trusted output), not feature lists.
Assumption Registry
| Assumption |
Confidence |
If wrong |
| Coach is the payer |
Low |
Whole model shifts (client/sponsor pays) — see plan page open question |
| Per-seat > per-session |
Med |
Re-model if usage cost dominates |
| There's headroom above transcriber pricing |
Low |
Trust value insufficient → margin pressure |
Self-Critique (≥3)
- The keystone (who pays) is unresolved; everything here is conditional on that answer.
- Zero WTP evidence — the tiers are hypotheses, not validated packaging.
- The "free alternative" (ChatGPT) is a strong price anchor that this strategy addresses by assertion (value perception) rather than proof.