How to price something that doesn't exist yet

Here's something we see all the time. A founder walks into a discovery call with a sharp idea, a clear sense of who it's for, maybe even some early wireframes - and when we ask "so what are you going to charge?", they wave their hand like we've just asked what colour the office curtains should be.

"We'll figure that out later. Let's just build it first."

It sounds reasonable. Pricing feels like a fine-tuning exercise, something you dial in once the product exists and people are using it. But that instinct - the build first, price later instinct - is one of the most expensive mistakes an early-stage founder can make. Not because you'll get the number wrong, but because you'll miss what the number tells you.

Price is a validation tool, not a spreadsheet exercise

When we talk about pricing at the validation stage, we're not talking about margin analysis or competitive benchmarking or any of the things you'd do once you've got traction. We're talking about something much more fundamental: does anyone care enough about this problem to pay for a solution?

That's it. That's the question.

And it's a question that surveys and landing page sign-ups and "yeah, I'd definitely use that" conversations with your mates simply cannot answer. Because saying you'd use something is free. Saying you'd pay for it - and how much - forces a completely different kind of honesty.

Testing price before you build tells you more about product-market fit than almost anything else.

Put another way: if you can't get someone to say "yes, I'd pay £X for that" with a straight face, you probably don't have a product. You have a feature. Or a nice idea. Or a solution to a problem that isn't painful enough for anyone to open their wallet.

You don't need a product to test a price

This is where it gets practical - and where most founders assume they're stuck. "How can I test pricing when there's nothing to sell?" Fair question. But you've got more options than you think.

1. Willingness-to-pay conversations. These aren't casual chats. You sit down with people in your target market and ask structured questions: At what price would this feel like a bargain? At what price would you start to question the quality? At what price would it feel too expensive to consider? This is called the Van Westendorp method, and it's been around since the 1970s because it works. You're not asking people to commit - you're mapping where their mental price anchors sit. Do ten of these conversations and patterns start to emerge fast.
2. Fake door tests. Build a simple landing page that describes the product and presents a price - or better yet, two or three price tiers. Add a "Buy now" or "Get started" button. When someone clicks, you don't charge them - you show a message saying the product isn't available yet and invite them to join a waitlist. What you're measuring is the click. Did they see the price and still move forward? That's a signal you can't fake with a survey.
3. Pre-sale or deposit campaigns. If you want an even stronger signal, ask for money. A small deposit, early-bird pricing, a founding member offer. It doesn't have to be the full price - even £10 down tells you something radically different from a free email sign-up. The gap between "I'm interested" and "here's my card" is where most startup assumptions go to die. And honestly? That's a good thing. Better to find out now.

What pricing conversations actually reveal

So why does this matter beyond just picking a number? Because pricing conversations surface things that no other form of validation does.

When someone pushes back on price, they're telling you something about perceived value - and that gives you a roadmap. Maybe the core feature isn't compelling enough on its own, but bundled with something else it becomes a no-brainer. Maybe the audience you thought was your ideal customer actually isn't, because the problem you're solving isn't worth enough to them. Maybe you're underpricing, and people are reading cheapness as a lack of credibility. (Yes, that happens more than you'd expect.)

Circling back to the founders we work with: the ones who test pricing early almost always change something about their product as a result. Not just the price itself - the feature set, the positioning, the target audience. It's one of those exercises that sounds narrow but opens everything up.

The gap between "I'm interested" and "here's my card" is where most startup assumptions go to die.

So when should you do this?

Before you write a line of code. Before you commission designs. Ideally, before you even finish scoping what the MVP looks like - because what you learn from pricing might change the scope entirely.

We're not saying you need a fully baked commercial model. You don't need to have figured out annual vs monthly billing, or whether you're freemium, or what your churn targets are. That's all growth-stage thinking, and it can wait. What you need right now is a rough answer to a simple question: will people pay for this, and roughly how much?

If the answer is yes, you've just de-risked your entire build. If the answer is no - or "not at that price" - you've saved yourself months of building something the market doesn't want at the price it costs you to deliver it.

Either way, you're making better decisions. And at the early stage, that's basically the whole game.

Let's talk about your idea

Pricing is just one part of how we help founders validate before they build. If you've got an idea and you're not sure whether it's ready for development - or you just want a second opinion from someone who's been through it - book a free 30-minute discovery call with one of Rise's founders. No obligation, no pitch. Just an honest conversation about where your idea stands and what to do next.

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