How Paddle got its users

Open the checkout of 200 software companies that sell direct, not through an app store. Look for three things: a card field served by js.stripe.com, one USD price with no VAT line, no local currency switch. Together they mean the founder is still the seller of record and personally owns every tax registration. That is the Paddle list. Rank it by how many countries their own pricing page claims to serve.

done whenYou can name the exact string in a prospect page that puts them on the list, and two other people applying your rule build the same list you did.

Write to one of two people: the founder who still owns billing, or the first finance hire. Wait for the moment the pain fires. A changelog line saying prices now include VAT, a support thread about a Japanese or Brazilian tax rule, a job post for Revenue Operations, or a mobile app opening a web store to skip the app store cut. That last pattern fills paddle.com/customers: Letterboxd, Runna, MacPaw. No trigger, no email.

done whenEvery row on your list carries a dated trigger you could quote back to them. A row with no trigger stays out of the send, even when the company looks like a perfect fit.

Open with the liability, never the rate. Three lines: the legal entity a customer sees on their card statement today, which is theirs, the two or three markets their own pricing page says they sell into where registration sits with the seller, and the swap a merchant of record makes, which is that they stop being the seller. Attach nothing. Ask one question: who files those returns today? The answer tells you if a deal exists.

done whenYour first line quotes something only this company could have written, pulled from their pricing page or checkout. Paste it into a rival's email; if it still reads fine, rewrite it.

Ship the free read-only thing. ProfitWell Metrics is posted as 100% free on paddle.com/profitwell-metrics and plugs into Stripe, Chargebee, Braintree, Zuora and Recurly, the exact stack Paddle wants to replace. It hands a rep live revenue and churn for a company that has bought nothing. With no budget, build the smallest version: one script, one connector, one number that tells you a call is worth an hour.

done whenSomeone outside your own circle connected the free tool to their live billing this week, and you can read the qualifying number without asking them for it.

Set the line before you send. The rate posted on paddle.com/pricing is 5% + 50c per Checkout transaction, so account value is a slice of the customer's own revenue, and the custom quote box names the escapes: products under $10, invoicing, large scale. Do your version: annual value equals your take rate times their volume. Below a few thousand a year, nobody writes by hand, they get the self-serve link.

done whenYou can state the annual value of one signed account as a single number, and you know how many hours of your own time that number pays for before the account stops covering itself.