Beyond the seat model: How usage-based pricing is transforming product teams with product leaders Brandon Walsh of Hubspot & James Brown of Metronome

In this episode of Unpack Pricing, James Brown, Chief Product Officer at Metronome, hosts a product leader-to-product leader conversation with Brandon Walsh, Director of PM, FinTech & Billing at HubSpot. Drawing on his experience at Intercom leading monetization, Brandon explains why usage-based billing fundamentally transforms product management, requiring deeper customer focus and making every team a "customer success team." He shares tactical frameworks for creating transparent and fair billing experiences, insights from implementing outcome-based pricing at Intercom, and how AI will shape how companies monetize. They explore how product careers are evolving to require cross-functional expertise, the build-vs-buy decision for billing infrastructure, and why product leaders should view billing as core to customer experience rather than back-office infrastructure. Brandon concludes with his "hot take" on why now is the time to be bold with pricing innovation while maintaining flexibility to iterate quickly. FULL TRANSCRIPT AVAILABLE HERE: http://metronome.com/unpack-pricing/beyond-the-seat-model-how-usage-based-pricing-is-transforming-product-teams – Follow: James https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-brown-0238ba23/  Brandon https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandonwalsh/ – Check out: Hubspot: https://www.hubspot.com/ Metronome: https://metronome.com/ – Timestamps: (00:00) Intro (03:34) The rise of usage-based billing (04:03) Customer experience in usage-based models (06:00) How product teams must change (08:00) Every team becomes customer success (09:09) Organizational impact and team structure (10:41) Inbound vs. outbound product management (12:00) Product leadership and monetization (17:32) End-to-end customer experience (18:16) The revenue anatomy framework (21:53) Building billing experiences in product (27:46) Billing as product experience (31:02) Build vs. buy decision framework (37:00) Managing billing complexity (40:58) AI's impact on pricing and billing (47:34) Agent pricing and outcome-based models (54:26) Hot takes: The future of pricing (59:14) Wrap