Fieldnote · Marketplace · Pricing review, 2024
Built the pricing model for a marketplace launch
Fieldnote connects companies with freelance user researchers. Before launch it had to choose how to make money, without scaring off either side.
Results
- booked in year one
- AED 4.5m
- take rate, paid by buyers
- 12%
- companies on the team plan
- 64
The problem
Fieldnote had 300 vetted researchers signed up and a waiting list of companies, but no pricing. The founders were split between a commission on every project and a monthly subscription, and their investors wanted an answer before the seed extension.
Get it wrong and researchers would take clients off the platform, or buyers would balk at a subscription before they had seen the quality of the work.
What we did
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Three models
Commission, subscription and a hybrid, each modelled on the waiting-list companies.
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Eighteen buyer tests
Real proposals with real prices sent to buyers on the waiting list.
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Researcher interviews
Twelve researchers on what would keep them on the platform.
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The decision
A 12% fee paid by buyers, nothing taken from researchers, and an optional team plan at AED 1,450 a month.
The result
Fieldnote launched in April 2024 and booked AED 4.5 million of research in its first twelve months. Researchers keep everything they quote, so very few projects leave the platform, and 64 companies moved to the team plan once they were running more than one project a quarter.
The model was simple enough to explain on the homepage in two lines, which Amara Okafor says was the point.
She built a pricing model our investors understood in one meeting and our sellers understood in one minute.
Have a decision you keep putting off?
Thirty minutes, no preparation needed. Tell me what you’re deciding and I’ll tell you honestly whether I can help.
Taking one new client from February 2027
