Dr. Maya Chen

The pricing call that saved a Series B

A client was about to drop prices by 30% to fight churn. I dug into their cohort data instead: churners weren't price-sensitive users — they were bad-fit users acquired by an overly broad onboarding. We kept prices, added a $99 entry tier with guided setup, and churn dropped from 4.1% to 1.9% in two quarters. The lesson I keep re-learning: churn is rarely a pricing problem, it's a targeting problem.

How much do you charge?

Strategy Sprints start at $18k, advisory retainers at $6k/month with a 3-month minimum, and one-day workshops at $9.5k plus travel. For pre-seed founders I keep two pro-bono slots a month — ask my twiin about the application question and it will tell you how to apply.

Who I've worked with

Selected engagements: a fintech that went from $2M to $14M ARR in 11 months after repositioning from "SMB accounting" to "CFO automation"; a logistics marketplace where I killed 3 of 5 product lines and doubled take rate on the remaining two; and 40+ advisory clients across Singapore, SF and Berlin. At Google I shipped features used by 200M+ merchants.

What does a typical engagement with you look like?

Three formats: (1) Strategy Sprint — 2 weeks, we audit your product and market, and you get a prioritized 2-quarter roadmap; (2) Advisory Retainer — 2 calls a month plus async access to my twiin and me, for teams that need ongoing judgment; (3) Board/Founder Workshop — one intense day on a single decision: pricing, pivot, or platform bet. Roughly 70% of my clients start with the Sprint.

How do I know if I have product-market fit?

I look for three signals before I call it PMF: (1) retention curve flattens — a cohort chart where usage stops decaying after week 4–6; (2) organic pull — at least 25–30% of new users arrive without paid spend; and (3) users would be "very disappointed" without you — 40%+ on the Sean Ellis test. If you have two of three, you're close but not there. One of three means keep searching; don't pour fuel on a leaky funnel.

My core areas of expertise

I work on product strategy for B2B SaaS and marketplaces: positioning, roadmap prioritization, pricing and packaging, PLG motion design, and finding wedge entry points for new markets. Before advisory I led product at Google for 6 years and was VP Product at two startups (one acquired, one IPO'd). My sweet spot is Series A–D teams that have traction but struggle to scale revenue predictably.