The Cohort Price Ladder
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 7
- Confidence
- —
Forte's pricing method for live cohort-based courses, derived from how Building a Second Brain went from $500 to $1,500 across fourteen cohorts. Two decisions carry the model. First, the reference class: he priced not as an online course creator but as a consultant, because what he was selling was live coaching and interaction, not a recorded product — under that framing $500 was cheap where against $25 self-paced courses it looked outrageous. Second, the ratchet: every cohort shipped a batch of improvements and the price rose $100, so there was always a concrete reason the price went up. He capped the base tier at $1,500 to keep it comparable to a weekend trip or a conference, then added higher tiers above it rather than pushing the entry price further.
Origin
Extracted from Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal
How to run it
- 1
Run a beta cohort out of your own network
Forte's first cohorts were entirely people he knew personally — colleagues, former co-workers, people from his co-working space, friends, exes. He asked for favours. Start with people who will show up for you rather than trying to source strangers.
Pro tip Accept that the early cohorts are rough — his were improvised, a Zoom call with some slides.
Watch out Don't scale acquisition before the thing is worth paying for; he only felt real pride in it around cohort six to eight.
- 2
Choose the consultant reference class, not the course one
Price against what you're actually delivering. If you're getting on calls over the course of a month, coaching and consulting one-to-one, price as a personal consultant. Against corporate training rates that number will look cheap; against self-paced courses it will look absurd.
Pro tip Say the reframe out loud: '$500 for an online course' feels expensive, '$500 for a month of personal consulting' feels like a bargain.
Watch out Anchoring on your own previous self-paced price — his was $25 to $50 — will keep you an order of magnitude too low.
- 3
Ship a batch of improvements every cohort
Before each new cohort, release a whole bunch of improvements — new features, new material, better delivery. The improvements come first; the price increase is downstream of them.
Pro tip Bundle improvements into visible batches so students can see what the extra money bought.
- 4
Raise the price $100 per cohort
Increase by a fixed, modest increment each run: 600, 700, 800, 900. Small steps let you find the ceiling without a single risky repricing, and there is always a stated reason the price went up.
Watch out A raise with no new value attached is the one thing that breaks the ladder's logic with returning students.
- 5
Set an accessibility ceiling and stop there
Forte stopped the base tier at $1,500 deliberately, wanting it to sit on par with a weekend vacation, a conference, or hiring a personal coach — a serious amount of money, but a category of spend people already recognise.
Pro tip Choose your ceiling by naming the comparable purchases in your buyer's life, not by what the market would tolerate.
Watch out He notes he could have kept raising it — the cap is a values choice, and you should make it consciously.
- 6
Add tiers above instead of raising the floor
Once the base was capped, he released a second and then a third tier. Buyers who want more access pay more without pricing out the people the entry tier was protecting.
- 7
Fund the next cohort from this one
For the first seven to nine cohorts Forte's only financial goal was to make enough in this cohort to run the next one. Each cohort came out a little bigger and a little more profitable until he could afford to hire a team.
Pro tip This keeps work-in-process low and removes any need for outside capital.
In the wild
Forte's self-paced course had sold for $25 to $50, so launching cohort one of Building a Second Brain at $500 in early 2017 felt like a bold leap and an outrageous price. The reframe was that he wasn't selling a course, he was being your personal Second Brain expert for a month. Every subsequent cohort shipped a batch of improvements and rose $100 — 600, 700, 800, 900 — until the lowest tier reached $1,500, where he stopped on purpose to keep it comparable to a conference or a coach. Higher tiers were added above it. By spring 2022 he had run fourteen cohorts, each a little better, bigger and more profitable.
→ A 3x increase in base price across fourteen self-funded cohorts, each raise backed by shipped improvements.
Common mistakes
Pricing against course-market comps
Comparing a live, coached cohort to recorded courses drags your price toward the cheapest thing in the category. Forte's whole unlock was refusing that comparison and charging as a consultant instead.
Raising price with nothing new attached
Every increase in Forte's ladder had a stated reason — the new features shipped that cohort. A price rise without a corresponding improvement is the version students resent.
Polishing before you have paying students
Forte's early cohorts were extemporaneous and improvised, and they still worked because they were live and interactive. Building a polished product before anyone has paid inverts the feedback loop.
From the transcript
“I charged not as an online course creator. I charged as a consultant.”
“And we increased the price. So, every cohort I would release a whole bunch of improvements, increase the price by $100. So, it went 600,…”
“we stopped at 1,500 because I wanted it to be accessible”
From the episode
Confronting my Productivity Guru - Tiago Forte
Tiago Forte