Product Pricing Strategies and Revenue Models for Founders by Shamim Rajani
Cast your mind back to your first client. How did you decide what to charge?
You opened a spreadsheet, glanced at what your competitor charges, subtracted ten percent so you would look like the budget-friendly option, typed a number into a box, and called it your pricing strategy.
If that sounds like you, then we need to talk… (Just Kidding)
This was the main agenda of the recent workshop Shamim Rajani conducted at the National Incubation Center, Karachi. The session covered pricing strategy, revenue models, forecasting, and how to avoid mistakes that drain businesses before they ever reach their potential. But the most valuable parts of the day came from the questions the founders asked and the answers those questions elicited from the room.
Consider this your front row seat to everything that was discussed.
A Room Full of Founders
The National Incubation Center is one of Pakistan’s most active startup ecosystems — a space built to turn early-stage ideas into businesses worth building. That day, the room had it all. First-time founders, still figuring out their product, their customer, their pitch. And seasoned entrepreneurs who had already been through the thick and thin of growing a business.
Before We Talk About Pricing, Let’s Talk About Why Businesses Fail
Approximately 20 percent of startups fail, with the majority shutting down within their first five years.
Here is why :
- No market need
Building a solution for a problem that does not actually exist, or that people do not feel urgently enough to pay to solve. - Poor pricing
Treating the price tag as a rushed afterthought rather than as the strategic signal it actually is. - Running out of cash
Usually the final symptom of a revenue model that was never properly stress-tested. - Weak customer acquisition
No sustainable, repeatable way to bring the right people through the door. - Wrong business model
A fundamental disconnect between creating value and actually getting paid for it.
Poor pricing is second on that list. But as the discussion in the room made clear, it is connected to almost every other failure on it. Underprice your product, and you run out of cash. Misprice your model, and you attract the wrong customers. Get the revenue model wrong, and even a great product cannot sustain itself.
The Question the Whole Room Was Thinking
“How do we actually decide what to charge? How do we know what our customer will pay?”
Shamim walked the room through five questions that founders need to answer before any number goes on a pricing page, a proposal, or a pitch deck.
- Who is actually my customer?
The one who has the problem, feels it daily, and has a budget set aside to solve it. - What problem am I solving?
The more precisely you can name the problem, the more confidently you can price the solution. - Why will they pay?
What does it cost them to leave the problem unsolved? If your customer is losing Rs. 2 million a month to a problem you fix, charging Rs. 50,000 is not generous. - How much will they pay?
The only way to know is to ask. Talk to ten real potential customers before you finalize anything. Ask what they currently spend on the problem and what a solution would genuinely be worth. - How do I acquire them?
Because the cost of getting a customer in the door has to be lower than the revenue that customer generates over their lifetime with you.
Next, Shamim Rajani discussed the common pricing mistakes founders make that need your attention.
Pricing Mistakes Founders Make
- Pricing too low
It attracts customers who chose you because you were the cheapest option — who leave the moment someone cheaper appears and who never had the budget to grow with you anyway. A low price also tells every future customer exactly what you think your work is worth. Raising prices later is possible, but it is harder than getting it right the first time. - Matching a competitor without understanding why
Your competitor’s price reflects their cost structure, their customer relationships, and the positioning decisions they made for their business. Matching it blindly tells you nothing about whether it is right for yours. Use competitor pricing as context. Never use it as a strategy. - Discounting every time someone pushes back
One discount to close a difficult deal feels like a smart tactical move. It becomes a problem when the next client hears about it, and the one after that. Discounts should be rare, deliberate, and tied to something specific: volume, early commitment, a pilot arrangement. - Ignoring the cost of delivery
Every project, every client, every deliverable carries a cost in time, in resources, in infrastructure. Know what it costs you to deliver before you decide what to charge. - Setting a price once and never questioning it again
A price set on day one reflects your understanding of the market on day one. Your understanding deepens. The market shifts. Your product gets better. Your customers start generating results they can quantify.
But what happens when you do everything right and the client still wants to negotiate?
Genetech Solutions had been working with a client on a product built for the B2B market. The product landed well. The client took it to their customers, gathered feedback, and came back with a set of requested changes — the normal evolution of a product being stress-tested by real users in the real world.
We put together a pricing proposal for the next phase of work.
The client wanted to revisit the number.
Rather than simply discounting or walking away, we built a strategy that worked for both sides: a capped monthly arrangement of fifty hours, with a clear price attached to that capacity. The client knew exactly what was being delivered. We knew exactly what was being committed to.
The lesson is about knowing the floor before the negotiation starts, communicating the value clearly, and finding a strategy that respects both sides. Price negotiation is a normal part of doing business. To negotiate effectively, you need more than just a good proposal; you need the foundation of trust that comes from direct and honest communication.
Shamim Rajani’s Takeaway on Client Communication
Early in her career, Shamim avoided video calls. It felt easier to handle a new client introduction over email. More control over what you said and how you said it.
“The moment you are on a video call with a client, you can read them. You know within minutes whether the deal is moving forward. You pick up things no email thread ever gives you — what matters to them, what worries them, what they’re not saying out loud. When that call goes well, the deal is ninety percent done before you’ve written a single proposal.” –Shamim Rajani
And if a video call is powerful, an in-person meeting operates in a different category entirely. The clients who stay for years, who refer you, who grow with you — those relationships begin with showing up.
For early-stage founders still finding their footing, this is a gem.
And that is a Wrap
A decade ago, a young founder with a genuine idea had almost nowhere to take it. The incubators, the accelerators, the investor networks, the mentorship structures — either absent or inaccessible. If you did not know the right people, the path was invisible.
That is no longer true.
Today, a student or a young graduate with a real business idea has platforms to pitch it, mechanisms to get it evaluated, and access to investment if the value holds up. The mentor-mentee culture that has already emerged in Pakistan’s tech and startup community.
Supporting young entrepreneurs is not a one-time gesture for us. It is part of how we think about building an ecosystem worth being part of. We recently visited NED University’s Final Year Project Expo, evaluating student projects and showing up for the next generation of entrepreneurs before they have their first client, pitch, or paying customer. If you want to read that story in full, you can find it here.
Three Questions to Take Back to Your Business Today
Before leaving, Shamim posed a practical challenge to the room. If you are an entrepreneur looking to audit your pricing strategy, answer these three questions today:
- Does my price reflect the specific pain point I am solving for my customer?
- Is my business model mapped for 12-month sustainability?
- Am I focused on getting my first paying customer?
Send us a message, and we will share the complete session guide with you. Forecasting formulas, pricing frameworks, the Business Model Canvas all of it, completely free.
And if you are building a product or looking for a technology partner who actually gets what it takes to go from idea to launch, hop on a quick call with the Genetech team. We have spent 20 years building software and AI solutions for businesses globally.
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