How do I calculate discounts for pricing plans for bigger volumes of a product?

Happy to sign a reasonable NDA and take a call.

If you're looking to build a service like Xero that imports users bank transactions and balances, you've got a few options. Xero uses Yodlee on the back end to power their bank feeds. As I understand it, it's rather old school and often errors out, but supports a huge range of banks through scrapers, private APIs, and all kinds of proprietary technology. You can also check out Plaid - you can think of them as the modern version of Yodlee. They support a more limited number of banks, but have an excellent API and SDK, and I believe are much more affordably priced than Yodlee.

SOM refers to the portion of the market that your business COULD actually capture, as you stated: "[the] % [you] can realistically achieve from the SAM." Let's use an analogy to break this down - and pretend you are talking about fishing instead of project management software. TAM refers to all the fish (that manage projects) in the sea. SAM are all the fish (that manage projects) within casting range of the dock you fish from (ie your solution is viable for them). SOM are the number of fish (that manage projects) you can reasonably catch within the amounts of time, energy, and bait you can allocate to fishing. The question within a question you ask about guidelines on believability is a great one. And, while I don't have a guideline or benchmark to share, I can confirm your instinct; ensuring that your projected SOM is reasonable is absolutely critical. The best way to project this is by having at least some of the equation variables grounded in reality - ie, actually catching some fish. If you can show how much it costs to acquire a customer, how much it costs to service that customer, and how much you'll make from that customer over a lifetime, you've got some great empirical evidence to show how you'll achieve growth within your SOM. I don't think of SOM as a target - it is rather the theoretical maximum number of customers or revenue I can achieve within the (sub)universe where my product or service adds value. In the end - the number is important - but not as important as how you present it, and how you'll approach it with your product. As an investor, you want to see more than just the answer - you want the thought process behind the answer. Was the founder thoughtful in their approach, did they look beyond the obvious while remaining pragmatic? Do they understand clearly why the SAM (macro-environment) and SOM (micro-environment) break out of the TAM in the proportions they've listed? More than happy to dive deeper on this.

In my experience, and based on the way I coach my clients, creating a pricing model without first creating a business model is an indication of a poor strategy. That said, here are my thoughts based on the information you've provided: 1. You are incorrect about your assumption of "the less the fee, the greater the potential # of clients". What you will very likely discover in practice is that there is a "sweet spot" in pricing such that any price above or below you'll see a drop off in members. In other words - any price LESS THAN or GREATER THAN your "sweet spot" price will result in FEWER members. This is one of those "non-intuitive" components you'll run into as an entrepreneur. 2. If you choose to price based on "competition" you are all but announcing that you are a commodity. Once again I'd suggest that this is a poor strategy. Instead consider your USP (or if you haven't yet done so...create one). Once you are properly differentiated YOU control and set pricing based on the VALUE you provide to the marketplace that they can't get anywhere else (i.e. Ferrari and Harley Davidson and Starbucks, etc). 3. Even with a solid strategy, a strong USP, a great product and a well-thought-out business model - you will likely still need to do some market testing (i.e. A/B testing) to find that "sweet spot" price I mentioned earlier. (I have yet to personally see anyone hit the mark right out of the gate.) 4. The last piece of info you provided - regarding monthly vs discounted annual membership pricing - would be a part of your OFFER. This is NOT the same as a pricing strategy - which should ideally be developed FIRST (at least conceptually). This is not to say you couldn't launch with the offer, but I'd suggest you figure out pricing FIRST and then develop offers based upon your deep understanding of your market. For assistance with any / all of the components I mentioned - give me a call. And be prepared that (in my opinion) whomever you decide to enlist this is going to take several calls to work out unless you have much of the groundwork already figured out. I apologize for this assumption - but I'm basing it on the information you provided and with hopes that this response will be helpful to others. I wish you great success!

In theory they could own the business as long as the profit of that business were used to further the non-profit work of the school. The bigger question would be whether the school actually owns the business or whether you as a separate non-profit were operating within the facilities of the school.