Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Launch HN: Skope (YC S25) – Outcome-based pricing for software products

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 46 posts

Re: Launch HN: Skope (YC S25) – Outcome-based pricing for software products

#11

Post by svnt »

This is interesting, but it seems to be at odds with SaaS models where the idea can be you get high margins because you get low usage generally.

I can see why people buying/using software would want this, but why would any software startup want to use it? What are the markets (other than non-profit), where pay vs success (and not attention/friction) is the limiting factor? The idea is you’re unlocking new markets or models, right?

And when/how is success measured? Otherwise it’s just like API billing, right?

Re: Launch HN: Skope (YC S25) – Outcome-based pricing for software products

#12

Post by benjsm »

svnt wrote: post #11

This is interesting, but it seems to be at odds with SaaS models where the idea can be you get high margins because you get low usage generally. I can see why people buying/using software would want this, but why would any software startup want to use it? What are the markets (other than non-profit), where pay vs success (and not attention/friction) is the limiting factor? The idea is you’re unlocking new markets or…

Thanks! Definitely see where you’re coming from. Software startups with really good products are generating massive amounts of business value for their customers right now. Subscriptions and usage models really constrain them in how much they can capture of that. Incentives are also constantly misaligned, especially with usage as buyers will always try to minimize usage as much as possible. Charging on outcomes changes that.

The entire AI customer support industry has pretty much already converged into this model. Tickets closed without being escalated to humans are usually what’s defined as an outcome. We think this model makes the most sense for any vertical AI company where agents are actually completing tasks end to end.

Success is defined by the buyer and seller before they use us. We just facilitate the parameters they agreed upon, so it’s pretty variable. A successful outcome can be anything from sourcing a real estate property that ends up closing to finding $X in cost savings for a dental clinic, using research agents. The biggest difference is you’re not just charging for tokens, but assigning a dollar figure to what a job well done looks like, no matter how many tokens it takes to get there.

Re: Launch HN: Skope (YC S25) – Outcome-based pricing for software products

#13

Post by sys13 »

SaaS vendors do these business value assessments, which are useful to the executive buyer and the vendor. The issue I find with them is customers don't want to do them in collaboration with the vendor since the vendor will use that to justify higher prices. 'Outcome' and 'business value' seem somewhat synonymous - so maybe need to focus on the business value more closely (and all the modelling that goes into that). I don't know if all of the billing needs to go through this, but perhaps discounts or bonuses could - at the very least helping with retention.

Re: Launch HN: Skope (YC S25) – Outcome-based pricing for software products

#14

Post by l3onl1ur »

abxyz wrote: post #5

Outcome-based billing is interesting. I think some people may balk at the idea of trusting customers to self-report their outcomes but self-reporting already happens often in enterprise billing. A customer can defraud their service providers by underreporting but the risk to their relationship with the service provider is rarely worth it (if the service isn't delivering value, drop it, if the service is delivering va…

> I guess you are in a tough position because you are trying to provide real world examples of a category you are hoping to define, but in this case, perhaps it's best to wait for some clear real world examples instead of muddying the waters like this. I fear that reading this, most people would conclude that outcome-based billing is just a way to define your usage-based pricing, rather than something that needs a platform like Skope.

You're right in that the cases of real-world examples are rare, but I believe it's only in software. The concept of outcome-based pricing have always existed throughout different work for a long, long time – think about test-prep service that promises to only need to pay if you get X score, real-estate agent that carry commission as a % of sale price, etc.

I think this instills confidence in something like this and makes me wonder why such pricing models haven't been applied to tech yet.

Re: Launch HN: Skope (YC S25) – Outcome-based pricing for software products

#16

Post by JoshPurtell »

This is a really great idea!

It sounds like your first approach is to verify that events met an agreed-upon threshold.

Have you looked into Mechanism Design and getting customers to e.g. pay more for great outcomes, and a little for ok outcomes?

Re: Launch HN: Skope (YC S25) – Outcome-based pricing for software products

#17

Post by benjsm »

JoshPurtell wrote: post #16

This is a really great idea! It sounds like your first approach is to verify that events met an agreed-upon threshold. Have you looked into Mechanism Design and getting customers to e.g. pay more for great outcomes, and a little for ok outcomes?

Thank you - yes! Would love to lean more about mechanism design. Mind diving deeper?

Re: Launch HN: Skope (YC S25) – Outcome-based pricing for software products

#20

Post by benjsm »

sdan wrote: post #18

this is great, outcome based pricing is definitely a competitive advantage and more aligns you with your customer!

100%! We think pricing and biz model will become a differentiator. Being able to adapt and iterate on pricing will be really important as underlying models get better
Post reply on HN