Why don't customers and teams do what the plan assumes? We use behavioural economics, the study of how people actually decide, to design pay, pricing and customer incentives that hold up in practice.
Built for software & SaaS companies, e-commerce businesses and SMEs in any industry, across Europe and English-speaking markets.
Behavioural strategy consulting applies behavioural economics, the study of how people actually decide, to the incentives inside a business: pay and bonuses, pricing and renewals, customer loyalty, and leadership decisions. DeFiGure uses its B.R.A.I.N. framework to find where real behaviour departs from the plan, redesign the incentive, and measure the change against a baseline.
A financial model assumes people weigh costs and benefits evenly. In practice they do not. They feel losses more than equal gains (loss aversion), stick with whatever option is pre-selected, react to how a choice is worded, and keep funding a project because of what it has already cost (the sunk cost fallacy). These patterns are predictable, which means they can be planned for.
An illustrative example: a company wants more customers on annual plans. The standard move is a discount for paying yearly. The behavioural moves are to make the annual plan the pre-selected option and to show what the monthly plan costs over a full year. The economics of the offer stay the same; only the presentation changes. We test each change against the current baseline and keep the one that moves the number.
Each part answers one practical question about how the people inside and around your company make money decisions.
What do people actually do? We read it from your data: renewals, payment timing, discount use, and how staff meet or work around their targets. Then we name the cognitive biases, meaning systematic thinking errors, behind the gap between plan and reality.
What does each reward really pay for? A bonus paid on revenue booked rather than cash collected rewards heavy discounts and slow-paying customers. We redesign rewards so they pay for the outcome you need, at a cost the business can carry.
How big is the effect in money? We put the behaviour into numbers: retention by customer group, response to past price changes, and the cost of each incentive per unit of result. Findings come with sources and stated limits, ranked by cash impact.
Who gets what, for which measurable result, paid when, and capped where? We design the scheme and model its cost in your financial model before launch, so it stays affordable at plan and at stretch, and fair to investors, customers and staff.
A nudge is a change to how a choice is presented (the default option, the order, the wording, the timing) that makes the better choice easier without removing any option. Examples: annual billing as the default, or a payment reminder sent before the due date instead of after it.
The background to the framework is in our article on the B.R.A.I.N. framework and behavioural economics for business. For how every DeFiGure engagement runs, see how DeFiGure works, from research to a ranked plan.
Bonus, commission and equity schemes that pay for the result you need, such as collected cash and margin rather than bookings alone. For early hires we size equity and vesting (earning shares over time) against your cap table, the record of who owns what. Our guide covers what your first employee really costs, equity included.
Loyalty built on what customers value, not points for their own sake: renewal terms, defaults and well-timed reminders. Because of loss aversion, customers react more to what they lose than to what they gain, so how a price rise is announced, timed and phased matters as much as its size. Read how to raise prices without losing customers. Price levels and packaging are covered under Strategic Advisory.
Better money decisions across the company: department budgets that are kept, expense rules people follow and, where you offer them, staff savings or pension schemes. The tools are defaults, reminders and short monthly feedback rather than long policy documents. We design the prompts and check them against your actual spend data.
The largest money decisions in a young company are made by a few people under pressure: whether to keep funding a product, when to pivot, how to split equity, when to hire. We add structure to those calls, such as a checklist before each big decision, a second reviewer and absolute numbers instead of percentages. Related reading: three behavioural biases that distort financial decisions, how to handle co-founder conflict, how to know when to pivot a startup and founder burnout and what helps.
Three do the most damage. The sunk cost fallacy keeps money flowing into a project because of what has already been spent. Loss aversion makes a loss feel stronger than an equal gain, so losing positions are held too long. Overconfidence leads founders to underprice risk and build optimistic base cases. Naming the bias in the moment and running a short checklist before each big decision is the cheapest fix.
Loss aversion is the well-documented tendency, from Kahneman and Tversky's prospect theory, for a loss to feel about twice as painful as an equal gain feels good. In a business it explains why customers react more strongly to a price rise than to an equal discount, and why teams keep failing projects alive rather than accept the loss of closing them.
Give existing customers advance notice, usually 30 to 90 days, tie the increase to value they can see, and phase it in. A single-digit increase that feels fair rarely causes much churn, meaning customers cancelling. Hold early or high-value accounts at their old rate for a set period, such as six to twelve months, rather than forever, and let anyone who wants to leave do so without friction.
Most early hires receive between 0.5% and 2% of fully diluted equity, which counts every share and option as if all options were exercised. The grant usually vests over four years with a one-year cliff, so nothing vests before the first anniversary. A senior operator can receive more. In Germany, early employees usually receive virtual shares under a VSOP rather than real options, for tax reasons.
Split on each founder's expected future contribution, not past effort, and always add vesting. A four-year schedule with a one-year cliff makes almost any honest split survivable, because equity follows the years actually served. Write down roles and decision rights at the same time, take more than a few days to agree, and revisit the split before the first funding round.
Retention stays flat whatever you ship, growth stalls despite real effort, your best users use only one small part of the product, or the market shows polite interest but no commitment. One weak signal is noise; several at once, over months rather than weeks, is evidence. Watch for the sunk cost fallacy here: what you have already spent is not a reason to continue.
Guides from the DeFiGure editorial team on biases, pricing, equity, co-founders and growth decisions.
Co-founder conflict sinks more startups than any rival. How to spot it early, defuse it, and part ways cleanly when vesting and equity are on the line.
How to raise prices without losing customers: a step-by-step playbook to set the increase, communicate it, and decide who to grandfather.
What it really costs to hire your first employee beyond salary, how much equity to give, and why hiring in Germany differs from the US.
How to structure your first board meeting and deck, how often to meet by stage, and the rule that keeps board meetings drama-free.
Knowing when to pivot a startup: a clear pivot-vs-persevere-vs-quit test, the main pivot types, and famous pivots that began as failing ideas.
How to scale a startup safely: the pre-scale checklist and the metrics to fix first, so you don't join the 74% killed by scaling too early.
Tell us where behaviour and the plan have drifted apart: pay, pricing, renewals or a decision you keep postponing. We reply within 48 hours, and the first 30-minute call is free.