I Had to Price a Product with Zero Competitors. Here's What Actually Worked

When I joined Sonic Linker's founding team, we were building an AI SaaS platform that didn't fit any existing category. No competitors meant no pricing benchmarks. Every article I read said "look at competitors" or "value-based pricing" without explaining how to figure out value when your product is the first of its kind.

I made every mistake in the book. We launched with pricing that felt "fair" to us. It wasn't. Here's what actually worked when I had to figure this out from scratch.

Start with What They're Already Spending, Not What You Think They Should

The biggest trap is thinking you need to invent a pricing model. You don't. Your customers are already solving the problem somehow, and they're already spending money on it.

At Finvestfx, we were replacing a mix of Excel sheets, email chains, and manual processes for treasury teams. I spent a week just asking prospects: what does your current solution cost? Not just software, the whole thing. Labor hours, error rates, delayed decisions, missed opportunities.

One treasury head told me they had two analysts spending 40% of their time on reconciliation. That's roughly 80K a year in loaded costs just for that one task. Suddenly, pricing our automation at 30K annually didn't feel aggressive. It felt like an obvious win.

The math matters. If you can't point to a real cost they're incurring today, you're guessing. And guessing means you'll either leave money on the table or price yourself out before you even start.

Your First Pricing Is a Hypothesis. Treat It Like One

When we shipped Sonic Linker's core product in 3 months, I was convinced our pricing was solid. It wasn't. We were charging per user, but our customers didn't care about seats. They cared about API calls and processing volume.

We figured this out because I kept asking customers during onboarding: "What made you pick this plan?" and "If we doubled the price tomorrow, would you stay?" The answers exposed the disconnect fast.

I changed our pricing twice in the first six months. Not because we were failing, but because each cohort taught us something new about what they actually valued. The second version stuck because it aligned with how they measured ROI internally.

If you're afraid to change pricing early on, you'll anchor yourself to something that doesn't work. Early customers expect iteration. Use that window.

Build Your Own Anchors with Tiered Value, Not Features

Without competitors, you don't have reference points. So you create them. I learned this managing 20+ enterprise clients at Finvestfx.

We had three tiers, but they weren't "Basic, Pro, Enterprise." They were "Single Market," "Multi-Market," and "Full Treasury Suite." Each tier solved a progressively bigger version of the same core problem.

The key was making sure the jump in value felt real. Single Market handled forex for one currency pair. Multi-Market handled six pairs plus hedging workflows. Full Suite added compliance reporting and team permissioning.

Customers could see the value ladder immediately. They knew where they fit. And when they wanted to upgrade, it wasn't about unlocking features, it was about solving more of their problem.

This beats "talk to sales for custom pricing" every time. Transparency builds trust, especially when you're unproven.

Test Willingness to Pay Before You Build the Pricing Page

At NJ Group, I coached 60 insurance advisors and IFAs on product adoption. The biggest lesson was this: people tell you what they'll pay when you ask them to commit, not when you ask them hypothetically.

Before we finalized pricing at Sonic Linker, I ran a simple test. I mocked up three pricing options and showed them to prospects during discovery calls. Not as a pitch, just as a "we're thinking about these options, which one makes sense to you?"

Half of them picked the middle option immediately. A quarter said the top tier was still too cheap for what we were solving. That signal was gold. It told me our pricing was in the right range and that we could afford to be bolder.

You don't need a formal survey. Just show real prospects real numbers and watch their reactions. If they flinch, you're too high. If they don't ask a single question, you're probably too low.

What Actually Matters When You Have No Benchmarks

Pricing without competitors isn't about inventing a model out of thin air. It's about understanding the cost of the problem today, testing your assumptions fast, and building value anchors that make sense to your customer, not just to you.

I got it wrong at first because I was thinking like a builder, not like a customer. Once I started asking better questions and treating pricing as a hypothesis, it clicked.

If you're in the same boat, start here: find out what they're spending now, pick a number that's defensible against that baseline, and be ready to change it when the data tells you to. The worst thing you can do is wait for the perfect answer. It doesn't exist.