pricing-tradeofflisted

# Pricing Tradeoff A pricing question in, structured options out — each one showing how the money actually works. A price without a mechanism is a vibe with a dollar sign. ## Verification gates (defined first; output is blocked until all pass) - **G1 — Margin mechanism per option:** every option states its mechanism — what the price covers, what absorbs the cost, and the margin consequence derived from input numbers (including the tail, not just the median). A naked price point fails the gate. - **G2 — Input-only figures:** every dollar amount traces to the input or is `[ESTIMATE: derivation]`. No imported benchmarks ("industry attach rate is 20%") presented as fact. - **G3 — Symmetric tradeoffs:** each option carries who it selects for/against and its failure mode. A strawman option (one obviously-broken alternative propping up a favorite) fails. ## Steps 1. **Bank the economics.** Price, margin, unit costs — and the cost *distribution*, not just the average: the heavy-user tail is where pricing structures break. Median $4 and top-decile $15 are different problems; if only an average is provided, flag the missing distribution as the first data gap. 2. **Identify the cost driver.** What makes one customer cost more than another (usage, seats, storage)? Structures that price the cost driver are stable; structures that absorb it are bets on the distribution — say which each option is. 3. **Build 3–4 genuine structures** (not 3 numbers on one structure): e.g. included-in-ba