Our Pricing Approach
Pricing is about understanding the value you create, how customers experience that value, and designing a model that holds up as the venture grows. Our practical approach to pricing AI platforms removes guesswork and gives you a foundation to build on with confidence.
The right pricing strategy sits at the intersection of value, positioning, and real-world usage.
Our approach breaks pricing down into clear steps: quantifying impact, benchmarking alternatives and designing models that reflect how customers will actually use the platform.
We start by identifying the value the platform delivers to the customer.
This may include:
- Time saved through automation
- Improvements in accuracy or quality
- Reduction in operating or compliance costs
- Risk reduction or error prevention
- Revenue uplift or productivity gains
By grounding pricing in tangible outcoms, we establish a value anchor that pricing decisions can be tested against. This ensures the platform is commercially justifiable from the customer’s perspective.
Next up, we analyse how the problem is being solved today, and what customers are already paying.
This includes:
- Manual processes and internal labour costs
- Legacy or incumbent software solutions
- Workarounds and fragmented tools
- Comparable AI or SaaS platforms
These benchmarks define the realistic price boundaries and help avoid pricing models that are either uncompetitive or misaligned with market expectations.
Pricing can’t be separated from positioning. We determine where the platform should sit in the market:
- Specialist vs horizontal solution
- Premium vs deliberately accessible
- Category leader vs focused point solution
This positioning shapes not only price levels, but how pricing is framed, justified and understood.
With value and benchmarks in place, we focus on the customer: how they experience the problem, how strongly they feel it, and their willingness to pay.
We assess price sensitivity by understanding whether the problem is a minor inconvenience or a meaningful operational, financial, or risk-related issue - and whether the buyer feels that pain directly or indirectly within the organisation.
These insights guide entry pricing, tiering, and how value is captured across different customer segments.
With clarity across value, positioning and customer behaviour, we establish indicative price ranges early.
Most AI ventures benefit from a mix of subscription and usage-based pricing.
We design models that reflect how customers actually use the platform, commonly including:
- Monthly or annual licences
- Usage-based components linked to AI consumption
- Tiered plans based on features or scale
- Per-organisation, per-user or per-seat structures
The goal is to keep pricing simple to understand, while allowing it to scale naturally as value increases.
Unlocking multiple revenue streams
Beyond standard base subscription model, many AI platforms create value in more ways than one.
We look for opportunities to unlock additional revenue streams that align with how the platform is used and where value is delivered.
Depending on the venture, this may include:
- Usage-based or consumption pricing layered on top of subscriptions
- Premium features or advanced analytics tiers
- Enterprise plans with custom integrations or service levels
- Implementation, onboarding or configuration fees
- Add-ons for compliance, reporting or industry-specific modules
- Data, insights or benchmarking products derived from platform usage
By designing these early, we ensure revenue can grow with adoption, without relying on a single pricing lever or reworking the model again.
Who we are
Here to turn your AI idea into an industry transforming venture
Mayfly helps you turn your AI idea into an industry-transforming venture.
As a venture studio, we bring product insight, go-to-market strategy, technical execution, and network into one integrated team, with shared ownership from the start.
We partner closely with a select group of ventures, validating what matters, reducing risk early, and giving founders clarity and confidence at every stage.
Build your strategic roadmap
Uncover the risks, commercial opportunity and strategy for success so you can build your venture with clarity and confidence.
$15,000
UVP
- UVP Definition
- Customer Discovery
- Problem/ Solution Analysis
- Competition Analysis
GTM
- Phased GTM Roadmap
- Channel discovery
- Funnel Design
- Messaging framework
- Business Model Strategy
Product
- Phased Product Roadmap
- Product Scope and Quote
- Product Hypothesis
- User Journey Mapping
Bring your idea to the table
Book a complimentary strategy session with our team
If you’re an industry expert thinking about how AI could genuinely improve the way things work in your field, we’d love to hear about it.
The first discussion is simply a chance to talk through the opportunity, find some clarity, and see if there’s a fit on both sides. Early ideas are welcome.
FAQs
The competition analysis is a key component of the UVP strategy. Understanding the competitive landscape is crucial for positioning your offering. By identifying competitors, their strengths, and gaps, you can better shape your product, messaging, and positioning to stand out and deliver real value.
The competition analysis is part of the UVP strategy, which sits at the core of Mayfly's Venture Building Engagement. This foundational work helps define the unique value your venture will deliver, ensuring it aligns with market needs and stands out from competitors.
Even if a similar AI platform exists, unique value can come from many sources — feature differentiation, superior user experience, competitive pricing, or exceptional support. If the competitor does not have strong market dominance, your venture can still succeed by executing a stronger GTM strategy.
Identifying market gaps is about understanding the industry's needs and assessing whether there is a product that can offer a strong UVP. Customer surveys, market research, and insights into pain points can help uncover areas where a well-executed AI solution could offer significant value.
Not necessarily. While being first to market can offer advantages, clear positioning, focused value delivery, and disciplined execution often matter more. With the right UVP, a strong go-to-market strategy, and continual product iteration, ventures can effectively compete even with established players.
Existing competitors can signal market validation, showing there is demand for the solution. Ideally, we enter the market with a unique value proposition that can be positioned strongly against the current market landscape. If the market is not saturated, there may be more opportunities to carve out a space and capture significant market share.
New ventures often win by focusing narrowly and delivering a superior user experience in one key area, rather than attempting to replace entire legacy systems. This strategic focus allows for rapid innovation, flexibility, and quicker go-to-market execution.
The competition analysis is part of the UVP strategy, which sits at the core of Mayfly’s Venture Building Engagement. This foundational work helps define the unique value your venture will deliver, ensuring it aligns with market needs and stands out from competitors. Once we’ve defined the UVP, it feeds directly into the Go-To-Market (GTM) and Product strategy, ensuring all elements of the venture are aligned and optimised for success.
The competition analysis is a key component of the Unique Value Proposition (UVP) strategy. The UVP strategy defines the unique value your venture brings to the market, and understanding the competitive landscape is crucial for positioning your offering. By identifying competitors, their strengths, and gaps, you can better shape your product, messaging, and positioning to stand out and deliver real value.
Even if there is a similar AI platform in the market, unique value can come from many sources. Feature/ functionality differentiation is usually the first place to look, but if there’s no unique angle in functionality, value could come from a better user experience, competitive pricing or exceptional support. Additionally, if the competitor doesn’t have strong market dominance, your venture can still succeed by executing a superior GTM strategy and reaching the right customers with more relevant messaging.
Identifying market gaps isn’t just about finding competitors. It’s about understanding the industry’s needs and assessing whether there is a product that can offer a strong unique value proposition (UVP). Customer surveys, market research, and insights into pain points can help uncover areas where a well-executed AI solution could offer significant value. The key is not just finding a gap, but ensuring the market is large enough for your UVP to make an impact.
Not necessarily. While being first to market can offer advantages, clear positioning, focused value delivery, and disciplined execution often matter more. With the right UVP, a strong go-to-market strategy, and continual product iteration, ventures can effectively compete and succeed in markets even with established players.
New ventures often win by focusing narrowly and delivering a superior user experience in one key area, rather than attempting to replace entire legacy systems. By prioritising a focused solution that directly addresses customer pain points, early-stage ventures can often outperform large incumbents in specific verticals or use cases. This strategic focus allows for rapid innovation, flexibility, and quicker go-to-market execution.
Existing competitors can signal market validation, showing there is demand for the solution. However, a saturated market can make it challenging to break through the noise. Ideally, we enter the market with a unique value proposition (UVP) that can be positioned strongly against the current market landscape. Alternatively, if the market is not saturated, there may be more opportunities to carve out a space and capture significant market share.
