Field notes on AI-native SaaS.
How to ship MCP servers, embed in-product AI assistants, and monetize AI usage — written by the team building the platform.
- AI monetization
From zero to a monetized AI feature in 30 days
A concrete 30-day plan to turn AI from a cost line to a revenue line — instrument day one, price week one, prove unit economics by month end.
Jul 15, 2026 · 4 min - AI monetization
Revenue share vs flat markup: pricing AI reselling
Two pricing shapes for reselling AI usage. Flat markup wins for SMB; revenue share wins for Enterprise procurement. Why 20% is the floor and most operators land at 30-40%.
Jul 11, 2026 · 4 min - AI monetization
AI cost optimization: seven tactics that actually move the bill
Where AI costs really come from and the seven tactics that reduce them — prompt caching, context windowing, tool result truncation, model routing, output bounds, retry budgets, and per-user caps.
Jul 7, 2026 · 4 min - AI monetization
BYO LLM keys vs managed: an honest pricing decision
BYOK isn't a revenue question — it's a procurement question. Here's when to ship managed, when to ship BYOK, and why most teams end up shipping both.
Jul 2, 2026 · 4 min - AI monetization
Per-user spend caps: the quietest revenue lever in AI billing
Workspace caps protect your wallet; per-user caps drive expansion. Here's how to design caps that contain abuse and convert power users without a sales call.
Jun 29, 2026 · 4 min - AI monetization
Stop subsidizing your AI features: turn cost into revenue
Flat-priced AI features quietly erode SaaS margins. Here's the four-move playbook — meter, BYOK, bill, expose — that turns AI from a cost center into a revenue line.
Jun 25, 2026 · 6 min - AI monetization
Are you giving your AI features away for free?
Most SaaS companies are quietly subsidizing AI features into negative margin. Here's the 5-minute diagnostic, the four-step fix (meter, mark up, cap, rebill), and how to do it without becoming a Merchant of Record.
Jun 24, 2026 · 7 min - AI monetization
Stripe usage-based billing for AI features
The 2026 pattern for billing AI usage in Stripe: subscription plus metered price using the Billing Meters API, idempotent event pipeline, credits not tokens, per-user caps at the gateway, and clean invoice presentation.
Jun 19, 2026 · 7 min