TL;DR - Price is not a function of cost, and is ideally set before your product is built. Do not attempt to set a price unless you have a profile for your target market. Then, price according to what your customer is willing to pay.
IMO, this is a marketing question and here's a good entrepreneurial process for profiling the market and your target price. First, ask yourself these questions:
* What actual value does the product give to the customer?
* What are the competitors / substitutions to the product?
* What makes this product sustainable?
* What does the customer currently pay for comparable solutions - in money, time, and effort?
This should give you a good feel for what your customer is willing to pay. Then, set some financial profit targets which is your total revenue - total expenses (don't factor investment money as revenue). Finally, bend your product / process to this target price (not the other way around).
I would encourage any engineer to research courses on Marketing and Entrepreneurial Finance. The best marketers merge the engineering process (i.e. research, statistic, and financial analysis) with psychology (i.e. the feels).
Anyways, good question and it should not be taken lightly. I've stalked HN for some time now, but this question caused me to finally create an account.
IMO, this is a marketing question and here's a good entrepreneurial process for profiling the market and your target price. First, ask yourself these questions:
* What actual value does the product give to the customer?
* What are the competitors / substitutions to the product?
* What makes this product sustainable?
* What does the customer currently pay for comparable solutions - in money, time, and effort?
This should give you a good feel for what your customer is willing to pay. Then, set some financial profit targets which is your total revenue - total expenses (don't factor investment money as revenue). Finally, bend your product / process to this target price (not the other way around).
I would encourage any engineer to research courses on Marketing and Entrepreneurial Finance. The best marketers merge the engineering process (i.e. research, statistic, and financial analysis) with psychology (i.e. the feels).
Anyways, good question and it should not be taken lightly. I've stalked HN for some time now, but this question caused me to finally create an account.