Madhavan Ramanujam, partner at Simon-Kucher and author of Monetizing Innovation, argues that the four most expensive PM mistakes happen before a single feature ships. He calls them feature shock, minivation, hidden gem, and underpricing — the silent four. The most common, by far, is feature shock: building features no one will pay for. Eighty percent of features ship without a willingness-to-pay conversation. The cost isn't the wasted build; it's the opportunity cost of what you didn't build instead.
His prescription is a sequence of conversations PMs systematically skip. The willingness-to-pay conversation belongs in the first 90 days of building, alongside problem validation — not after PMF. Asking would you pay? and how much? early reframes everything: what to scope, what to cut, how to package.
Once you're packaging, Madhavan offers leader-filler-killer as the framework most teams misuse. Leaders are the standout features that drive purchase decisions. Killers are table-stakes — features whose absence kills the deal, but whose presence isn't a reason to buy. Fillers are nice-to-haves. Most teams over-invest in killers and under-invest in leaders.
Tier design is where the framework usually breaks down. Most companies design tiers around feature counts — Tier 1 has 8, Tier 2 has 14. Madhavan's view: tiers should map to who buys them, not what's in them. Solo founder, growing team, enterprise — the tier names should answer "who buys this?" If you can't answer it, the tiers are mis-designed.
Finally — how to raise prices on existing customers without churn. The single biggest predictor of low churn isn't notice. It isn't grandfathering. It isn't an annual prepay alternative. It's pairing the increase with a meaningful product improvement. Customers don't resent paying more for more. They resent paying more for the same.