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Status: Decided — July 3, 2026 (personas kept; funnel and LTV math rebuilt) Model of record: Pricing Strategy — Guest / Free / Pro 12.99/mo,12.99/mo, 99.99/yr, 7-day trial. Studio is a v4.0 concept; Studio personas below describe future upgrade targets, not launch buyers. Companion docs: Rollout Plan | Revenue Projections

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Why this page exists

Pricing without personas is just numbers. To know whether the tiers are priced right, you have to know who sits in each tier, why they pay, and how they got there. This page maps personas to the launch tiers and walks the journey from “never heard of High IQ” to paying evangelist.
Corrected from the earlier draft: this model does have a free logged-in tier — Free (stash, favorites, manual order upload) is central to the journey, not eliminated. The old “90–92% bounce at a hard paywall / 6–8% pay directly” funnel is replaced with the trial-based funnel from Pricing Strategy: install → trial 8–12%, trial → paid 35–50%, net install → paid 3–5%.

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The personas

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Guest — Casey the Curious

Casey’s behavior:
  • Lands on a strain detail page from Google
  • Reads, scans the label of something at the dispensary, listens to the soundtrack
  • May come back 2-5 times for different lookups
  • Eventually wants to save something they liked → that’s the Free-account moment, not a paywall
Why Casey creates a Free account: saving a favorite or tracking a stash item costs nothing — just an account. Zero dollars, low friction, and now their data lives in High IQ. Why Casey doesn’t: privacy concerns, doesn’t trust apps with cannabis data, a free alternative (Leafly) is “good enough,” or cannabis is too small a part of their life to track.

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Free — Fiona the Tracker

Fiona’s behavior:
  • Tracks a small stash, saves favorites, uploads the occasional order manually
  • Generates basic share cards — Free users are the virality engine
  • Keeps bumping into Pro-gated moments: “analyze this order,” Stats Dashboard previews, Suggest Strain
Why Fiona starts the trial: she has weeks of her own data in the app, and the trial promises to do something with it (first AI Notebook on a strain she actually owns). The 7-day trial means the $12.99 question is deferred until after the product proves itself. Why Fiona never converts: tracking alone satisfies her; that’s fine — she costs pennies and her share cards recruit the next Casey.

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Pro — Pat the Patron

Pat’s behavior:
  • Buys from one or two regular dispensaries
  • Wants Gmail Sync to auto-import orders without typing
  • Generates a Notebook on every new strain
  • Checks Stats Dashboard monthly
What converts Pat during the trial week:
  • Gmail order sync backfills their history in minutes (Historical Import is included in Pro with usage caps — no extra purchase decision)
  • First AI Notebook on a strain they actually have
  • Stats Dashboard showing where their money goes
  • Receipt parsing (snap a photo, done)
Pat’s plan choice: starts monthly at 12.99;theannualpush(25−3512.99; the annual push (25-35% target mix) moves committed Pats to 99.99/yr.

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Studio personas — Sam the Specialist (v4.0, future)

Not launch buyers. Studio ($19.99/mo) ships in v4.0, 12+ months post-launch. These five sub-personas are kept because they define who Studio will be built for — and at launch they are simply high-engagement Pro subscribers. The AI Copilot concept that anchored them is likewise a future concept, not a current plan.
At launch, the job is to get all five into Pro and observe which Pro features they max out — that data sets Studio’s v4.0 feature split.

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Founder — Frankie the First-In (early evangelist, recruited with perks)

Frankie loves being early, posts unprompted, and gives the launch social proof. Recruit a handful directly (cannabis Reddit voices, podcast hosts) rather than waiting — with recognition perks, not discounts. The Founders lifetime offer is cancelled — no lifetime products of any kind (founder decision, July 2026). The earlier plan — 600 Founders units, 499Studiolifetimes,30499 Studio lifetimes, 30% lifetime rev-share, 149K launch cash — was already retired as unrealistic at ~10 website visitors/day, and its per-unit economics were net-negative anyway (see Pricing Strategy).

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The customer journey

The realistic path from stranger to evangelist under the launch model. Rates come from the canonical funnel in Pricing Strategy.
1

Stage 0 — Stranger

Searches Google for cannabis info. Trigger: lands on a TIWIH SEO page. (Current reality check: ~10 visitors/day — growing this is the binding constraint on everything downstream.)
2

Stage 1 — Guest Browser

Reads a strain page, maybe scans a label, listens to a soundtrack. Zero friction, no account. Trigger: returns for another lookup. Visitor → install runs ~1-2%.
3

Stage 2 — Free Account (the save moment)

Wants to remember a strain or track a purchase. Creates a free account — no paywall here. Starts building stash, favorites, manual orders, share cards. This investment is the upgrade hook: they now have data they don’t want to lose.
4

Stage 3 — Trial Start (8-12% of installs)

A Pro-gated moment (analyze my order, Stats Dashboard, Suggest Strain) meets accumulated personal data. Starts the 7-day free trial — a deferred decision, not a credit-card cliff.
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Stage 4 — The Trial Week (make-or-break)

Day 1: Gmail sync / Historical Import (capped) backfills their history; first AI Notebook on a strain they own. Day 3: Stats Dashboard nudge. Day 5-6: trial-ending reminder with their own week’s insights. 35-50% of trials convert — this week is the single highest-leverage surface in the product.
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Stage 5 — New Pro Subscriber (months 1-3)

Net install → paid lands at 3-5%. Early churn is the danger: 6-8%/mo in the first months, targeting 5% at steady state. Retention levers: weekly summary, badge/rankings progression, annual-plan offer (25-35% mix target).
7

Stage 6 — Habit Formation (months 3-12)

Logs orders weekly, generates Notebooks, checks stats, shares cards, refers 1-2 friends. Annual conversion happens here.
8

Stage 7 — Power User → Studio candidate (v4.0)

Maxes out Pro. When Studio ships in v4.0, these users see AI-media previews below their reports and become the upgrade cohort. No upgrade-rate assumption is baked into Year-1 revenue — targets get set from observed preview engagement.
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Stage 8 — Evangelist / Founder

A small subset becomes public advocates (Reddit, podcasts, YouTube). The Founders perks program (founder badge, early access, direct line to the founder — no lifetime pricing) is aimed exactly here. Identify and amplify them — feature them, give them product input.

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Blended LTV (the CAC ceiling for partnership spend)

Assumptions (stated so they can be checked against real cohorts):
  • Mix: 70% monthly (12.99)/3012.99) / 30% annual (99.99 ≈ 8.33/mo)→blendedARPU≈∗∗8.33/mo) → blended ARPU ≈ **11.60/mo gross**
  • Churn: 6%/mo blended at steady state, with heavier churn in months 1-3 → effective average lifetime ~11-13 months (not the naive 16.7 months that flat 6% implies)
  • Take rates: Apple 30% in each subscriber’s first year (15% only if Small Business Program enrollment is confirmed), RevenueCat ~1%, refund leak 2-5%
Implication: there are no paid ads — founder decision, full stop (not a platform-policy artifact). The CAC ceiling at a 3:1 LTV:CAC discipline must come off contribution LTV, not net LTV: ~65−85/3≈∗∗65-85 / 3 ≈ **20-29 per acquired subscriber**. That ceiling governs influencer-partnership spend (creator gifting, sponsorships) if that spend is ever used — see Stage 2 of Revenue Projections. The old draft’s ~330blendedLTVassumed3330 blended LTV assumed 3% churn, 19.99 Studio buyers, and Founders rev-share flywheels; none of that is in the launch model.

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What each persona pays — at a glance