Unit Economics & Pricing

If you lose money on one customer, you lose more money on a million.

The business case

Ten Dollars for Unlimited Cinema — MoviePass · United States · 2017–2019. In 2017 MoviePass cut its price to roughly ten dollars a month for a ticket a day. Subscribers grew from around one million to three million within months.

Why it matters

If you lose money on one customer, you lose more money on a million. MoviePass did not fail because it could not attract customers. It attracted them extraordinarily well. It failed because each one was unprofitable at the moment of acquisition. Growth is a multiplier. Applied to a positive unit, it compounds; applied to a negative unit, it accelerates collapse. This is the single most common fatal error in student and early-stage business plans, and it is entirely avoidable with one page of arithmetic.

What you will be able to do afterwards

  • What unit economics means, and how to calculate yours
  • Designing a revenue model that fits your customer
  • Pricing psychology — what actually influences willingness to pay

32 screens, audio-narrated, with a quiz at the end.