Pricing as a strategic tool: lessons from Aikido Security
Maarten Laruelle €16M ARR in 3 years. Not through value-based pricing, but by deliberately ignoring it.
This morning I attended the 1 Million Club at Scaleup Flanders. Host: Roeland from Aikido in Ghent. Topic: the Aikido founding story.
Of course I checked their pricing page beforehand, and I had my questions.
Their model is radically simple. Free (developer), Basic, Pro, Advanced. No upsells. No usage-based complexity. “Talk to sales” only for Enterprise, where it makes sense.
As a pricing expert, I naturally thought: you are leaving money on the table. Where is the value capture? The ROI-based tier? The expansion revenue?
But Aikido is playing a different game.
They are in a market where American and Israeli players charge €200K+ per year. Where 80-90% of all alerts are false positives. Where buyers already know what they want and what they hate about their current tool.
Their strategy: market capture is their value capture.
Better and cheaper. Every friction removed. Developers can start on their own. Win on product, not on sales.
The result: 85% inbound. 1,700 paying customers in 3 years. €16M ARR. And regular small price increases without extra complexity.
That is pricing as a strategic tool.
Value-based pricing is not the goal here. And sometimes the smartest pricing decision is deliberately leaving margin on the table to capture the market.
Aikido can always shift later. But the CAC advantages of this model are worth more right now than ARPU optimization.
Know which game you are playing.
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