Profile picture of Jean-Yves Delmotte
Jean-Yves Delmotte
$38k MRR. $0 raised. 0 employees. • Co-founder @ BuddiesHR.com • 5x SaaS Founder • YC alum • Aspiring Marathon Runner
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September 9, 2025
After bootstrapping BuddiesHR to $38k MRR, I can say this with confidence: Pricing is THE biggest growth lever. In 2 years at BuddiesHR, we changed our pricing 3 times. The last time, it nearly doubled our revenue. Each time, same process: ↳ Roll out the new pricing to new users only  ↳ Monitor the conversion rate  ↳ If it holds, roll out to 20% of existing users  ↳ If no major pushback, scale to the rest Here's how it evolved: 1. $0.25 per employee/month (flat)  2. $0.50 per employee/month per app (we had 4 apps at the time)  3. $0.50 per employee/month for one app, $1 for the full suite  4. Today: $1 per employee/month, $2 for the full suite I know what you think. This sounds scary as f*ck. It is. But try it once, and it will become your new addiction lol. Every time we pushed the pricing up, we feared conversion would drop.  It didn't.  Turns out, most founders undercharge.  Not because of the market.  But because of their own fear. Now most users pick the $2 plan.  Because it's a no-brainer.  Because pricing frames perceived value.  And because if you're on a marketplace like Slack, you only get one shot to convert. Pricing isn't a side topic.  It's not a detail.  It's a growth channel.  Treat it like one. ---------- 👋 Hey, I'm J.Y! I'm the co-founder of BuddiesHR, the #1 suite of Slack apps.  Using Slack? Give it a try, it's a no-brainer. I post 2x a week (sometimes more) about my journey and share what I've learned along the way.  Follow me for more content like this 👆
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48 Likes
September 9, 2025
Discussion about this post
Profile picture of Arnaud Belinga 🧊🔨
Arnaud Belinga 🧊🔨
Co-Founder @Breakcold | The sales CRM for 2025, not 2010.
1 day ago
impact of growth levers in order of importance => doubling pricing yields more growth than dividing churn by 2 which yields more growth than => acquiring 2 times more customers Pricing first, focus on churn second, focus on acquisition third. I don't remember where I watched empirical evidence with stats on it, maybe a pricing guide somewhere
Profile picture of Valdis Sprogis
Valdis Sprogis
Founder & COO | Building digital identity infrastructure of tomorrow
3 days ago
Excellent post on a rather sensitive subject J.Y Delmotte. You also should be transparent as to what the price increase covers or why it's done. This here point answers everything clearly: "Because pricing frames perceived value." Back at Wise when we had the first major announcent on the conversion fee rate incrase from a standard flat fee to a blended cost model, the announcement was to make it completely transparant on the cost component breakdown. That explanation was done in an email announcement to all users showcasing what that new price covers. And everyone took it extremely well with full understanding, because of the service's value that we were providing.
Profile picture of Toni Hopponen
Toni Hopponen
Founder @LandingRabbit | Turn any text into marketing pages in minutes
3 days ago
I like the gradual approach for existing customers. Might try that next time 👍
“Vibe coding” is absolute sh*t. I don’t care what the Twitter threads say. I don’t care how cool that Notion-esque “collab with AI” demo looks. In real life? It’s a train wreck. Let me paint you the masterpiece: You finally hack one dumb feature into place. It barely works. It’s fragile, like Jenga at move 27. So naturally, you think, “Cool, let’s build feature two.” This is where the bomb detonates. Touch literally anything and feature one falls apart. You debug for hours, fix one thing, and now feature two is broken. Smash them together and your codebase is a landfill of duplication, hacks, and accidental copy-paste genius. And we’re not even talking about code quality. Or structure. Or actually understanding what it’s building behind your back. Survive that? You get spaghetti code that looks like it was written by four drunk interns and a golden retriever. GenAI gurus still act like it’s magic. Wrong. Quick check: Would you drive a car if you knew the self-driving software was vibe coded? Would you store your life savings in a bank with vibe-coded backend? Would you get on a plane if you learned “well, the AI did its best with autopilot, but wow, those first two buttons work great”? No. Nobody with survival instincts would. Here’s the reality, today: ↳ Vibe coding ≠ productivity. It's a slot machine. ↳ One feature “working” is pure luck. ↳ Add another? Enjoy the chaos. ↳ Your codebase becomes a museum of bugs and TODOs. Want code with integrity? Consistency? Something actual developers can ship, maintain, and scale? Forget it. Maybe one day these tools can take your napkin doodle and ship Stripe-level systems. Right now? It’s brute force, constant rollback, and praying nothing explodes when you add a second button. That’s why, at BuddiesHR, we still build the hard way. The proper way. Actual engineering discipline. Shipping features that stay shipped. No magic shortcuts. No AI hallucinations. Founders: stop deluding yourselves. You want one “Auto-GPT”-built feature? Maybe. A product? Not this decade. Stay sharp. Write real code. Ship things that last. Or strap in for the vibe-coded rollercoaster. Good luck getting off alive. ---------- 👋 Hey, I'm J.Y! I'm the co-founder of BuddiesHR, the #1 Employee Engagement Software that lives in Slack. I post 1x a day about my journey and share what I've learned along the way. Follow me for more content like this 👆 P.S. I'm writing a no-BS B2B SaaS playbook with everything I've learned. Want a free copy? Click “Visit my website” to sign up.
249 comments
May 26, 2025
VC funding is silently killing startups. Not because venture capital is toxic. Not because founders can't close rounds. But because raising money has replaced solving real problems as the North Star. TechCrunch headlines hype us up daily: ↳ "Startup secures $2M to revolutionize paper clips" ↳ "$5M seed raised to build Netflix for hamsters" Suddenly founders aren't chasing product-market fit. They're chasing term sheets, investor validations, and vanity headlines. Here's exactly what happens next: 1/ Startups pitch investors more than they talk to users. 2/ Teams design slides rather than solve critical pain points. 3/ Companies spend against money they haven't truly earned—burning runway and trust simultaneously. But here's the raw truth no one admits: ↳ Millions raised ≠ product validation. ↳ Buzz doesn't pay salaries. ↳ Most VC-backed startups still implode spectacularly. ↳ Secretly, overfunded founders envy ruthless, profitable bootstrappers. I know exactly WTF I’m saying — because I have "been there, done that": ↳ Got into YC. ↳ Raised a $6M seed. ↳ Lived that TechCrunch dopamine hit. But guess what? Raising doesn’t protect your startup from implosion. It speeds it up. Today, with BuddiesHR, I’m clean as ever: ↳ Bootstrapped. ↳ Profitable at $30K MRR. ↳ Lean. Free. Focused. No toxic cap tables. No investor breathing down my neck. No more chasing vanity metrics like a trained monkey. Founders: Solve real f*cking problems. Stack real revenue. Own every inch of your company. Because raising money isn't the real game. Survival, profitability, and freedom are. Stay lean. Stay focus. Stay bootstrapped. _________________ Enjoyed this post? Drop it a like (👍) — or I'll take it personally. (And follow J.Y for more content like this)
177 comments
April 18, 2025
FanDuel: acquired for $465M. Now worth $20B. Founders got... NOTHING (lol) If you think "that won’t happen to me," you’re not paying attention. Tech Twitter pumps you full of unicorn dreams. VCs sell you “partnership.” But here’s how it really plays out: Founders build a beast. 9-figure revenue, market heat, timing so perfect you can smell the gold rush. But somewhere between all those “raising our next round” PR blasts, they surrender control. Board flips. Investors pile on $550M+ in liquidation preferences. Suddenly, “drag-along rights” means they can unload the whole company… founders be damned. That’s exactly how FanDuel’s founders ended up owning zero from a $465M acquisition. The investors walked with the winnings. The people who built it walked away empty, watching their creation soar to $20B while lawyers fight over the crumbs. You think this is rare? That’s cute. Every month another founder show up, eyes wide, cap table bleeding, shocked that the board cashed out and left them holding air. Here’s the game: ↳ You never really own your company once you lose the board. ↳ Preferences > passion, every single time. ↳ If the people writing checks want out, you’re a passenger, not the driver. At BuddiesHR, we chose our path early. No mystery terms. No board filled with strangers. No upside casino. Founders: Don’t become another FanDuel headline. 1/ Learn the f*cking math. $465M can = $0 for you. 2/ Control your board until it hurts. 3/ You’re not building for a press release — you’re building for freedom. Real game = survive, grow, own your f*cking outcome. _________________ Enjoyed this post? Drop it a like (👍) — or I'll take it personally. (And follow J.Y for more content like this)
88 comments
May 13, 2025