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It's August 2017. You're CPO at MoviePass. CEO Mitch Lowe just announced the new price: $9.95/month, unlimited movies. The average AMC ticket is $12. Users are pouring in — 150k signups in two days.
The finance model your team built shows: every active user costs MoviePass ~$30/month at current consumption rates. The CEO's pitch is "we'll renegotiate ticket prices with theater chains once we have 5M subscribers." AMC has publicly said they will never negotiate.
You have to ship pricing for the next quarter.
**Framework: unit economics never become positive at scale if they're negative per-unit.** "We'll renegotiate at scale" is a bet, not a plan — and the counterparty (AMC) has already told you they won't. The right call: pivot pricing to a 3-movies-a-month plan at $9.95 (unit-economically defensible), or tier it (unlimited at $24.95). KEEP was the actual call. It bankrupted the company in 22 months.
MoviePass burned through $150M of subscriber payments and venture funding by mid-2018. The service went dark in September 2019 with 3M users left mid-subscription.