The competitor set your price

Two nights before 11.11, the same phone call goes round.

A rival has gone to fifty. Somebody saw it, on a story, in a family group, on a banner inside the app, and the founder hears about it at nine at night. By morning the offer that was signed off at thirty is at fifty, and the creative, the landing page and the licence are being redone by people who went to sleep with a different number.

I have watched this from the platform side more times than I can count. What stays with me is who was allowed to make the decision.

At nine at night one person in the company can change a price. Nobody in the company can tell that person no. The finance lead who costed the thirty is asleep. The person who wrote the terms is asleep. The buyer who knows which lines can take fifty and which cannot is asleep. The only meeting that happens is the one inside the founder's head, and in that meeting the case for fifty is the only case presented.

Now ask what the customer saw. Almost none of them saw the rival's fifty. They saw an offer on their own phone, from a brand they already followed, and most had already decided whether they would buy from it. The comparison happened in exactly one place, and that place was the founder's screen.

So the extra twenty points were bought for the founder's nerves, at nine at night, by the one person who could, and they will be paid for in December by everyone who could not.

The competitor did not set the price. The only person awake did.