Pricing and Billing: Where Strategy Meets Execution with Ryan Susanna

Ryan Susanna is the VP of Sales at LogiSense, where he helps telecom, IoT, and SaaS companies operationalize complex usage-based and hybrid pricing models. With more than two decades in monetization, automation, and billing infrastructure, Ryan didn't come up through pricing theory—he came up through execution. His work sits at the intersection of pricing ideas and the systems required to make those ideas real at scale.

In this episode, Ryan breaks down why billing platforms quietly shape—and sometimes constrain—pricing innovation, what usage-based pricing actually looks like in practice, why many AI pricing models default to credits, and the single pricing habit he believes every company must adopt: testing pricing ideas in isolation before scaling them across the business.

 

Why You Have to Check Out This Episode:

• Understand why pricing innovation fails after approval—and how billing and monetization systems quietly block execution.
• Learn which modern pricing models die first in rigid systems (usage-based, high-watermark, hybrid, credits).
• Discover how to test pricing ideas safely without risking your entire go-to-market motion.

 

"Find an isolated way to test your pricing hypothesis before you boil the ocean for your entire motion." 

— Ryan Susanna

 

Topics Covered:

02:00 – From Physics to Monetization (By Accident). How Ryan's background in physics, computer science, and sales led him into billing systems—and why monetization sits closer to pricing than most teams admit.

04:00 – "Why Should Pricing Care About Billing?" Mark challenges the assumption that billing is just collecting money. Ryan explains how billing systems determine which pricing models are even possible.

07:00 – High-Watermark Pricing Explained. Charging based on peak concurrent usage—not total usage—and why this better reflects customer value in many SaaS and telco models.

08:30 – Earned Discounts and Hybrid Usage Models. How companies combine multiple usage metrics to guide behavior while protecting margins.

14:00 – Meter Everything (Even If You Don't Charge for It). Ryan explains why future pricing decisions depend on historical usage data you may not even know you need yet.

19:00 – Credits vs. Value-Based Pricing. Mark reframes credits as a payment mechanism—not a pricing model—and explains why value correlation matters.

23:00 – The Pricing Test Most Companies Skip. Why executives roll out pricing changes globally—and how isolated testing could prevent costly mistakes.

25:00 – Final Advice for Pricing Leaders. Ryan's core message: pricing strategy without monetization readiness is just theory.

 

Key Takeaways:

"You could dream up any pricing scenario if you want, but if you can't operationalize it at scale, you are setting yourself up for failure." – Ryan Susanna

"Billing systems quietly decide which pricing models you're allowed to use." – Ryan Susanna

"If you pick a model and you have the same model forever, then it will not appear hard for you—because it's what you've always done. What's hard is change." – Ryan Susanna

 

People / Resources Mentioned:

• LogiSense – Monetization and billing platform enabling complex usage-based pricing
• OpenAI – Referenced in the context of AI credit-based pricing models
• Databricks – Example of proprietary credit-based pricing (DBUs)
• Slack – Example of active-user pricing metrics

 

Connect with Ryan Susanna:

• Email: [email protected]
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryansusanna/

 

Connect with Mark Stiving:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving
• Email: [email protected]