method candidate goes to: this-edition V villager

The four moves after 'do they miss it': define it, price it, deliver it at a flat marginal cost, offer it free to the people who know you

Something is not a product until it has a shape, a price and a way of being delivered that does not break you on the tenth customer. Define the thing somebody receives, not the technology. Price it at a number you would be content to be paid, not one from a competitor's page: RiskMandate's ladder is £10 for the pack, £50 for a working vault, £500 for the vault corrected for your situation, £1,500 with two sessions and a professional's signature. Deliver it at a cost that grows a step at a time, which the agentic workflow now allows (the twentieth customer costs close to the second). Then give the £500 tier away, twenty of them, to early adopters, power users and past customers, and watch whether they take it at zero. If friendlies will not take it free, a bigger audience will not take it either.

Decided by. Nobody yet: a candidate for Dinis to read, comment on and decide (keep, rewrite, merge, cut, article first, later, not doing it).

Note. Prices as published on 2 October 2026; the early access page went live on 30 September 2026, invite only, and does not say the price. The two outcomes are both in the article: take it and ask for more, and the question becomes price; interesting but no time, does not fit the team, hard to deploy, and the problem is not the price, back to the drawing board.

Where it comes from

• Price it, then give it away The step after 'do they miss it'; What the programme is, as published; What brutal means (newsroom)

What it answers in the 2018 book

• Be a founder answered written, Life Patterns

Where it goes

Chapter Price it, then give it away, part Start the company (drafting); topic Be a founder (or a one-person service).

Other ideas proposed for the same chapter: Free is never free for the other side: measure the cost you place on them, then cut it, Pay after the value: credit first, a meter, a balance that can go below zero, and no subscription by default, Below about five pounds the card fee is the price, so pence payments only work aggregated.

Node idea:price-it-before-you-give-it-away in graph.json; see it in the graph. Source: admin/content/graph/ideas.json.