Your Pricing Is Wrong (And You Can't Fix It From Your Laptop)
Patrick McKenzie told us to charge more over a decade ago. Indie hackers still default to $19/mo. Here is why, and the 30-minute conversation that fixes it.
The Advice Everyone Quotes and Nobody Follows
Over a decade ago Patrick McKenzie (patio11) wrote one of the most cited posts in indie software. The argument was two words long:
"Charge more."
It became a meme. Every founder who has ever lurked on Hacker News has quoted it. And yet the default pricing page for a new B2B SaaS in 2026 still looks like this:
- Starter: $19/mo
- Pro: $49/mo
- Enterprise: Contact us
Three tiers. Two of them too cheap. One of them nobody contacts.
Why We All End Up Here
Two reasons. One honest. One uncomfortable.
Honest: $19/mo feels fair. You can feel good about it. You can tell your friend at the coffee shop without flinching. The anchoring math is "my Netflix is $16, so $19 sounds reasonable."
Uncomfortable: You priced based on what YOU would pay. You are not the customer. You never were.
The dental office that would happily pay $400 a month for your scheduling tool is not comparing you to Netflix. They are comparing you to the three hours of front-desk time they waste every week, which at $22/hr loaded cost is $264 of quiet bleed.
You priced for your emotional comfort. They would have priced based on their pain.
Where Real Prices Come From
Prices are not calculated. They are extracted.
The founders who price well do not sit at a laptop running pricing-framework spreadsheets. They sit across from the buyer and ask questions like:
- "What are you paying today to deal with this?"
- "What would have to be true for this to be a no-brainer at 5x what we just said?"
- "If I took this away from you tomorrow, what would you replace it with?"
- "Walk me through the last time you signed off on a SaaS budget increase."
The answers are never "$19/mo."
This Is Half the Reason InsiderMatch Exists
Customer discovery is the first thing every founder skips. Pricing discovery is the second.
InsiderMatch lets you book a 30-minute paid conversation with an operator who owns the budget line you are trying to win. Before your pricing page ever goes live.
In one call you can find out:
- The price band they approve without flinching
- The price band that triggers "I need to loop in my boss"
- The price band that makes them laugh and close the tab
- The unit (per seat, per location, per transaction, per closed deal) that matches how they already think about spend
You cannot get that from a pricing calculator. You cannot get it from Twitter. You definitely cannot get it from other indie hackers.
The Hard Truth
Every month you run at the wrong price costs you real money. If your ceiling is $49 and your true price is $400, you are not being reasonable. You are subsidizing a business that will not survive long enough to raise prices later.
"Charge more" was never about courage. It was about doing the conversation that tells you what "more" actually is.