Startup marketing, billing, monetization, pricing, and some more
What is usage-based billing? Tokens, credits, and outcomes, explained in the controlled language of aircraft manuals. The unit changes. The meter does not. The post What is usage-based billing? Tokens, credits, and outcomes, explained in Simplified Technical English appeared first on Arnon Shimoni .
Since 2024 the role of the CMO or marketer in a startup has really changed. Mostly, everyone has the same tools so everyone is producing the same slop at the same time. I can no longer remember times that I ve read content that looks and sounds exactly the same. They organize cool dinners and then [ ] The post You gotta deal with the boring part first appeared first on Arnon Shimoni .
The current AI pricing was always going to go away because it just doesn t make sense. For whatever reason (lots of speculation) Microsoft canceled internal Claude Code licenses, there were widespread reports that Uber blew its entire 2026 AI budget in four months, and we all know GitHub has now dropped flat-rate plans across its [ ] The post The current AI pricing was always going to go away…
SaaS freemium fails for AI. With high GPU costs, pricing must be a dynamic product surface. Learn to gate intensity, outcomes, and compute instead of features. The post Pricing is a product surface appeared first on Arnon Shimoni .
CARR isn't a better version of ARR. It's ARR with a suit on. How AI startups are inflating revenue metrics with opt-out contracts and single-month annualization The post Contracted ARR considered harmful appeared first on Arnon Shimoni .
I managed billing for 200+ price points and 14 engineers. Here's the 6-question framework I wish someone gave me to decide whether to extend or replace a billing stack at scale. The post Extend or replace how to evaluate your billing stack at AI scale appeared first on Arnon Shimoni .
PLG had a good run, but it's not enough anymore. AI is changing how software gets discovered, bought, and expanded. Credits are emerging as the core commercial primitive. Not as a pricing model, but as infrastructure. Notes on what ALG means for billing, growth, and the go-to-market playbook. The post Notes on AI Led Growth (ALG) appeared first on Arnon Shimoni .
Your pricing page promises usage-based credits and hybrid plans. Your billing system runs on two duct-taped Stripe subscriptions and a spreadsheet. Everyone changed their pricing in 2025. Almost nobody changed what's behind it. The post 1,800 pricing changes in 2025, zero billing overhauls appeared first on Arnon Shimoni .
8 years building billing systems and I m still wrong about just how hard it actually is. Not getting better at it hard , but like really genuinely discovering new layers of complexity I never saw coming. Back when we started Paid at the end of 2024, I remember people telling me billing is not hard, [ ] The post Building a billing system is still hard, even with AI appeared first on Arnon Shimoni .
With hybrid "AI pricing", users face siloed entitlements, creating "stranded assets" where purchased credits remain unused. This misalignment leads to significant churn risks as companies reassess value versus spend amid rising AI costs and limited access to resources. The post The stranded asset in AI pricing appeared first on Arnon Shimoni .