The Startup Accelerator Diary: Week 7

Escape the City
Nov 5 · 4 min read

Ash Collins is a Communications Specialist and aspiring entrepreneur and is sharing an update each week as she goes through Escape the City’s Startup Accelerator.

Read the week 1, week 2, week 3, week 4, week 5 diary.

For the eagle eyed readers among you, wondering where my week 6 blog post is… I haven’t lost count, I promise! We had a break last week and we’re now into week 7 and the second half of the course. The first half was focused on nailing an idea and product, whereas the second half gets down to the pointy end — working out what to charge, how to set up the business and crucially, how to fund it.

This week we looked at sales and pricing. Our course leader, Andrew used the ‘pirate funnel’ (AARRR) to talk us through the customer journey in sales:

Ultimately, the goal is to keep people in the funnel, and minimise people dropping off at any point. Analysing the metrics and data associated with each stage can help to determine which areas might need more attention. From this, minor tweaks can be made to see if it has an impact on attracting and keeping more people in the funnel.

On pricing, we talked about how determining a price is psychological and how the price of something doesn’t always equate to its value. We considered three strategies to approach pricing:

  • Cost based: working out all fixed and variable costs and adding a margin on top.
  • Market based: determining a price based on what similar products and services are priced at by competitors in the market.
  • Value based: pricing based on what your target customers believe the product or service is worth.

There’s no one best strategy or recommended way to approach pricing. I’m thinking of doing a bit of each to come up with a pricing model: I want to be able to cover my costs, be competitive in the market, and also in the ballpark of what my target customer believes the product is worth.

Our course leader Jess, mentioned that whatever the price is that you come up with, you should try to find your ‘happy price’. That price is the sweet spot between something that is a fair price for your customers and is enough to make you feel happy, and motivated to work and generate more sales.

To understand perceived value and price, we did a really interesting exercise in pairs. We had information given to us as either a seller or a buyer of an item, and we had to nominate how much we would either charge, or pay, for a particular item or service. When comparing to what the other person had nominated, there was often quite a large difference. It really highlighted the subjective nature of value, and how difficult it is to understand individual circumstances that might contribute to someone’s perception of value.

The decoy effect is something else that was briefly mentioned in class that I’m going to read up on in more detail. In simple terms, it’s when companies try to nudge a customer up from a cheaper product to a more expensive one, by introducing a third product which is priced to make the most profitable product most attractive to a customer. I want to understand it in the context of the app I’m building but also just in life so that I can recognise the next time I’m choosing something without realising I’m doing so because of how a product has been positioned against other price points (I’m a sucker for the second cheapest bottle of wine on the menu).

Our homework for this week is to develop our sales funnel and to take a step towards our MVP — whatever that looks like. For me, that is building a prototype to start testing reactions and seeking feedback on what is most important for my target market.

Because done is better than perfect, here’s my landing page as it stands, which has a video demo of the app. Yes, before I’ve even had a chance to connect it to my actual domain name; it’s that fresh. I’m sure it will change a million times over, but it’s good to get something out there to start getting feedback on.

My mission for this week is to find my target market to test my app, which means that you’ll probably find me lurking in cafes and near playgrounds cruising for mums and dads. On that note…until next week!


Ash Collins is a Communications Specialist by day, and by night she’s an extracurricular machine. At the moment that means she’s a comedy and musical theatre improviser, yogi and an (aspiring) entrepreneur. Ask her next year and who knows what she’ll be up to!

Ash will be posting an update each week as she goes through Escape the City’s Startup Accelerator course.

Escape the City

Written by

Do something different. We are on a mission to liberate talented people from unfulfilling corporate jobs. www.escapethecity.org

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade