Ask HN: Is my product priced too high? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Is my product priced too high?

7 pointsmarcomassaro16 comments

I want to gauge feedback from startups and entrepreneurs here who are in the pitching phase - whether it be to investors, partners or anyone else. Mainly looking to see if the pricing of my product is too high and what other HNers think about it.

My product is www.getapitchdeck.com and it allows any startup or entrepreneur to create an attractive pitch deck for pitching investors, partners, an idea, concept, service and so on. A license includes the source files (html, css, .psds) for editing and a video walkthrough. In the future I want to create this as an online service, but I'm in the validation stages right now and making it a service is a much bigger project.

Here are some benefits and my goals with this product:

• Make pitch decks the new standard for pitching instead of powerpoint.

• A pitch deck on your own URL makes it easy to share versus sending a bulky attachment

• Pitch deck makes you stand out: its interactive and tells a story which keeps the user engaged

Some questions:

• Is the price too high? (Its a $1000 value)

• Is this something you would find useful? (more focus on your startup rather than spending tons of time creating a deck from scratch)

• Anyone here interested in giving it a test run for free?

Appreciate all the help and feedback

I was just about to purchase the most economical option at getapitchdeck.com but stopped because of the Paypal checkout. I would offer traditional checkout method with the drop down menu of credit cards. I have had too many issues with Paypal over the years and even the guest option turned me off. However for those that use it all the time it is nice to see, I am probably a minority in that aspect.

Your pricing seems fair, the demo video could be expanded and show more of how information is inputted and from the viewpoint of a new user instead of the finished product. It does look sharp and I hope it is easy to make but I was left wondering exactly what I was purchasing and how long it would take to make our final product. Website design is sharp, we love it! Overall looks like a great product and we may purchase later on today if we don't find something else to suit our needs. Keep up the great work!

Appreciate your response. We are going to tweak our homepage and payment options very soon. Email me at marco@getapitchdeck.com as I'd like to answer any more of your questions and talk a bit further.

Hmmm ... I personally think it's overpriced. Your initial users will probably be technology startups who can easily hack an HTML pitch deck. They can even use a blogging platform and there are a bunch of JS libraries that gives powerpoint style presentation. So your best bet is to lower the price as much as possible to give a better incentive for them not do it manually and then you can make money on the volume of subscriptions. Anyways, I like the look and feel of the whole thing. Good luck.

Appreciate your feedback. I'm getting mixed opinions on pricing - some are telling me its good, others are saying to lower it. I'm going to A/B test the pricing. What do you think is an acceptable range? $20-$30?

I would personally pay $15-$20 if need be. And A/B testing on the prices won't be fair to the B category. Don't you think :)

How did you figure that its a $1000 value? You're providing 3 pages of text and graphics.

Can pitch decks produced on your site generate results? If you can point to even one success story with your product, your value goes up in my eyes, but right now it looks like and fluffy.

Custom design & coding from a legitimate company would cost $1000+: http://deckfoundry.com/pitch-deck-design/

Besides that I am looking for a startup or a few to take free copies to use as a case study / get feedback

If that is the case, you could show a side by side comparison of the prices involved with alternatives, like Deck Foundry.

Good idea - I appreciate your response

Another question:

I'd like to add a "live demo" of the product in action but I'm afraid of people ripping the source or doing a file > save as hence the video on the homepage. Any ideas on how I can show the product without the source being ripped?

You can consider putting one long screenshot of the page as demo. This is the closest you can get without putting the actual thing out there.

Good idea. Perhaps the video + a screenshot, although with the screenshot some users may not realize that the deck is built with jQuery for the navigation (slides to each deck).

It's a really nice product and the price is just right IMHO.

Thank you.

hm. At the end we have done our pitch deck as a "Google Docs Presentation". We considered reveal.js by Hakim or even Apple Keynote.

The best thing about the service is that it gives you a good starting point. Why not give the template away for free and offer custom support for a good amount of cash?

Interesting concept - thanks for sharing. Ours come with documentation and video walkthroughs along with support. I'm afraid if we are targeting startups (who tend to be hackers), there won't be much money in providing just support. I like what reveal.js has done. We are a bit different in the sense that we follow a more standard pitch deck - I think reveal.js can get a bit confusing or overwhelming for an older crowd.

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