Stage, the Dynamic Monetization Platform for SaaS Teams, Raises $5.1 Million Seed Round

Stage, the monetization platform for SaaS teams, is announcing the availability of its first product–flexible plans and packaging–as well as a $5.1 million seed round led by Kara Nortman at Upfront Ventures alongside F-Prime Capital, HighSage Ventures, BoxGroup, and prominent founders and angels from Adobe, Stripe, Plaid, Figma, and more.

Stage provides all-in-one software and APIs to help software teams understand, measure, and capture value across their product, with features including:

Stage works alongside existing billing and payment systems, such as Stripe, to provide intelligence and control over when and what gets monetized within SaaS products.

Leave no value uncaptured: In 2022 an estimated $570B will be spent on software globally, but Stage believes that number could be significantly larger because most software businesses are under-monetized. Stage helps software teams close the Value-Monetization Gap – the difference between the value created for and the value captured from customers – by solving the data and infrastructure challenge required to monetize effectively.

“Monetization is an intimate series of moments in your customer’s experience. You must remind customers of the value awaiting them, and that value must be reflected in the product itself,” said CEO and co-founder Patrick Despres-Gallagher. “Most companies ‘set and forget’ pricing and monetization because of the risk, fear, and effort associated with evolving these monetization moments, but we know we are providing the data and control needed to make good choices over time with confidence.”

Back to the basics: Market conditions have turned and software businesses are refocusing on revenue and cash flow objectives over growth at any cost. Product-led growth (PLG) and “try before you buy” sales motions are now a cornerstone of effective and efficient revenue growth, but these are not static experiences. The burden of understanding and keeping up with the market and customer preferences is growing for engineering teams that are already struggling to keep pace with aggressive roadmaps. Ultimately, this leads to less value being created for customers while product, engineering, and data teams are left to connect the dots between access, usage, and billing–a big distraction.

“Pricing and packaging is hard,” said Loom CEO and Co-Founder Joe Thomas when discussing challenges around monetization. “It used to feel like there was no way around it… or is there?” Stage is the solving this problem by revolutionizing how companies approach monetization.

Making Monetization a Science

”Monetization is an area of deep insecurity for many software businesses. As an investor, board member, and former operator, it’s one of the areas where we spend a lot of time with our portfolio–and where art can become science with platforms like Stage,“ said Kara Nortman, Managing Partner at Upfront Ventures. ”I’m excited to help them give companies confidence in their monetization stack and a toolset to create a better experience for their customers”

About Stage

Stage is on a mission to empower builders and innovators to create enduring technology. Stage is a dynamic monetization platform for early- and growth-stage software companies. Starting with flexible plans and paywalls, the platform gives product teams the ability to understand, measure, and capture value from customers with confidence. Stage was co-founded by CEO Patrick Despres-Gallagher and CTO Kaiser Leib in October 2021 with remote operations and hubs in California and Montana. Patrick was previously one of the early Product Managers at Loom and RapidSOS as well as a family office investor focused on enterprise software. Kaiser was previously an early Software Engineer at Juniper Square and SoFi. Find them at www.heystage.com and follow them on Twitter and LinkedIn.