ClearPrice

Context

African SaaS founders were managing revenue operations in a structural gap: global billing tools like Stripe and Chargebee weren't built for local currencies, Nigerian tax requirements, or the pricing norms of early-stage African SaaS. The alternative was manual — invoicing in spreadsheets, tracking renewals in Notion, handling quotes over WhatsApp. ClearPrice was founded to close that gap with a localised, quote-to-cash system built for Africa.

Problem

No validated product definition existed to start from — the gap was real but uncharted. Early conversations with SaaS founders confirmed their workflows varied significantly from business to business. The design challenge was to define a system flexible enough to handle that variation without becoming too complex for a founder who was also managing sales, engineering, and customer success simultaneously.

Approach

Led product design from 0 → validated MVP, anchoring every decision in founder validation before building. Ran MVP definition workshops with African SaaS founders and CFOs — testing workflow assumptions before designing for them. Designed pricing configuration, quote generation, subscription management, and billing dashboards with compliance requirements (tax, FX, local currencies) embedded in the workflow rather than bolted on. Partnered with engineering on the data model and audit trail requirements for multi-currency operations.

Outcomes

ClearPrice launched a soft pilot with African SaaS businesses within nine months of product definition. The MVP validated a market position with no direct competitor: a quote-to-cash system built specifically for African SaaS operators, compliant with local tax and currency requirements, and scoped for founders without a dedicated RevOps function. Pilot feedback confirmed the validation-first approach — the product fit was high because the users who would buy it had shaped the design from the start.