From: Tobi Achebe, CEO To: you Subject: Fwd: Pricing analysis — thoughts before Thursday?

Board wants a pricing answer Thursday. I put our customer list, the competitor set and last year's win/loss notes through Claude and got this back in about twenty minutes. It's better than anything we've produced internally. Before I take it to the board — anything I'm missing?

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PRICING STRATEGY ANALYSIS — MERIDIAN Prepared by AI analysis, reviewed by T. Achebe

Executive summary

Meridian is currently under-priced relative to the value delivered and to the competitive set. We recommend moving from $29 to $49 per seat per month for new customers, with a twelve-month grandfather period for existing accounts. Projected incremental annual recurring revenue: $847,320.00.

1. Competitive positioning

Product	List price / seat / mo	Positioning
Northwind	$65	Enterprise, security-led
Calypso	$45	Mid-market, integrations
Bramble	$52	Mid-market, analytics
Orrery	$38	SMB, self-serve
Vessel	$72	Enterprise, compliance
Tanager	$44	Mid-market, workflow
Halcyon	$58	Enterprise, vertical
Meridian	$29	Mid-market

Meridian is priced 35% below the mid-market average of $44.75 and 52% below the overall set average. This gap is not explained by capability differences.

2. Value analysis

Customer interviews and usage data indicate Meridian saves the average team approximately 6.2 hours per week in manual reconciliation work. At an average loaded cost of $52/hour, this represents $322 per week or approximately $1,394 per month in value delivered per team.

At $29/seat and an average of 14 seats per account, Meridian captures $406 per month — approximately 29% of value delivered. Industry benchmarks suggest value-based pricing typically captures 25–35% of delivered value for mid-market SaaS, but best-in-class operators capture 40–50%.

3. Willingness to pay

A survey of 180 users in the current base asked what they would be prepared to pay per seat per month:

Price point	Would purchase
$29	94%
$39	81%
$49	68%
$59	41%
$69	19%

Revenue is maximised at $49, where 68% retention of demand yields the highest expected value.

4. Projection

	Year 1
New customers (projected)	312
Avg seats	14
Incremental per seat	$20.00
Incremental ARR	$847,320.00

5. Risks and mitigations

Risk	Mitigation
Existing customer backlash	Twelve-month grandfather period
Sales cycle lengthens	Enablement and updated battlecards
Competitor undercuts	Monitor; we retain room above Orrery
Billing system changes required	Two-week engineering effort

Recommendation

Move to $49/seat for new customers effective Q1, with grandfathering. Revisit at twelve months.