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connorpark24 commented on Launch HN: Skope (YC S25) – Outcome-based pricing for software products    · Posted by u/benjsm
abxyz · 8 days ago
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 value, the fees are worth it). SaaS companies are already regularly writing off unpaid bills. That said...

https://www.useskope.com/resources/why-now

"Salesforce, Sierra, Zendesk, and Intercom are a few of the early movers in adopting an outcome based model. Their definitions of a 'successful outcome' vary from simply facilitating a conversation (Salesforce) to completing a customer support query with no human elevation needed (Sierra)."

"Chargeflow is another company that automates the process of collecting revenue and preventing chargebacks for ecommerce, which has adopted this model. They take 25% of each recovery and charge $39 for each chargeback prevention. Their pricing page explains the idea perfectly: success first, pay second."

Are these examples of "outcome-based billing" or just the redefinition of usage and/or fees as an "outcome"? "Facilitating a conversation" and "completing a support query" are not trust-based outcomes, that's just usage. A thing happened within the service's boundary. Stripe's usage based billing (and Orb etc.) can be used for this already.

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.

connorpark24 · 8 days ago
This is a totally valid concern - we believe that outcomes cannot be treated the same as "usage events". Facilitating trust between a seller and a buyer requires that the buyer can see exactly what they are being billed for. Existing platforms ingest event data, but only display it back to their users' customers in the form of an aggregated summary (ex. 500 API calls), rather than the specific details of each event. We believe that this approach works for granular usage data, but not outcomes. Hope this helps!
connorpark24 commented on Launch HN: Skope (YC S25) – Outcome-based pricing for software products    · Posted by u/benjsm
serjester · 8 days ago
Congrats on the launch guys, but is this any different from setting up usage based pricing in stripe? This kind of seems like a solution in search of a problem.
connorpark24 · 8 days ago
We've designed our platform to use a smaller set of primitives than Stripe Billing (no Meters + Subscriptions + Prices + Rate Cards), making it easier to configure, and more friendly for non-technical users. For outcome-based pricing, we are able to provide greater transparency than Stripe in displaying the specific outcomes achieved and the context for each of them.

u/connorpark24

KarmaCake day3September 8, 2023View Original