Lumen Payments

What do they actually do

Lumen Payments makes it easier for SaaS teams to add subscriptions, usage-based billing, and feature gating without building those systems from scratch. It offers a dashboard to define plans, features (entitlements), credits, and invoices; SDKs/APIs to check feature access and record usage events; embeddable UI like a publishable PricingTable; and integrations for payments, taxes, and invoice PDFs. Today it integrates with Stripe and Dodo Payments, and it can generate hosted payment links for checkout flows site/docs docs GitHub README.

The developer workflow is straightforward: embed the PricingTable on your pricing page, check a user’s entitlement before enabling a feature, and record usage with a single events API, so the same tracking powers both access control and billing. Non‑engineers can adjust plans, features, credits, and invoices in the dashboard without code changes. Lumen positions itself as production‑ready and publishes simple pricing with a monthly subscription and a one‑time setup fee site docs.

The company is an active YC W24 startup based in Berlin with a small founding team. Public docs and repos indicate ongoing work on broader payment-processor coverage and additional SDKs to reduce integration friction YC profile GitHub org.

Who are their target customer(s)

• Early-stage SaaS founders needing subscriptions and metered billing quickly.: They want to launch billing and invoicing fast without building metering, dunning, taxes, and entitlements in-house; they prefer an SDK, hosted UI, and a dashboard to go live quickly docs site.
• Product engineers who must gate features and bill for usage in real time.: They need a single place to check access and record usage events to avoid duplicating tracking logic and reduce billing/entitlement edge cases docs.
• Teams outgrowing Stripe Billing for complex pricing and entitlements.: They need more flexible feature mapping and simpler migration paths than their current setup; Lumen publishes migration guidance to support these use cases docs.
• SMB to mid-market companies with limited engineering bandwidth.: They want non‑developers in product or operations to adjust plans, credits, and invoices from a dashboard without deploying code docs.
• SaaS vendors selling globally who need payment, tax, and invoicing handled.: They need multiple payment processors, tax calculation, and invoice PDFs managed for them; Lumen supports Stripe and Dodo today and signals broader PSP support on its roadmap docs GitHub README.

How would they acquire their first 10, 50, and 100 customers

• First 10: Leverage YC and founder networks for early adopters, waive setup fees, and offer hands‑on migration/support to remove integration blockers and gather fast feedback YC profile docs.
• First 50: Drive self‑serve signups via the embeddable PricingTable, a Next.js starter, and “Lumen vs Stripe” migration guides shared across developer communities; supplement with how‑to blog posts and short onboarding calls site docs GitHub starter.
• First 100: List in relevant ecosystems (e.g., Next.js/Vercel), add PSP partnerships (e.g., Paddle, Razorpay, Checkout.com per roadmap), and run a small targeted outbound motion focused on Stripe migrations and multi‑rail needs; use webinars and marketplace listings to scale inbound GitHub README docs.

What is the rough total addressable market

Top-down context:

The subscription billing software market is roughly $7–9B and growing at a high‑teens CAGR through the decade, per industry reports GVR TBRC. The broader global SaaS market is in the $300–400B range in 2024 and expanding Grand View Research.

Bottom-up calculation:

As a wedge into SMB/mid‑market SaaS: if there are about 30k SaaS companies globally and 40–60% buy third‑party billing rather than build, with an average annual contract of ~$10k–$20k, that implies a $120M–$360M initial serviceable TAM for Lumen’s core use case; expanding to larger enterprises and adjacent verticals pushes toward multi‑billion totals consistent with top‑down figures AscendixTech GVR.

Assumptions:

• ~30k SaaS companies worldwide in 2024 AscendixTech
• 40–60% of targets prefer third‑party billing platforms over in‑house builds (assumption)
• Average annual contract value for SMB/mid‑market billing/entitlements of ~$10k–$20k (assumption)

Who are some of their notable competitors

• Stripe Billing: Developer‑focused billing with subscriptions, metered usage, hosted pages, and an Entitlements API for feature access control; it’s the default incumbent for many startups and scales broadly subscriptions/usage entitlements.
• Chargebee: Subscription and billing system with a product catalog, hosted checkout/portal, metered features, and built‑in entitlements for mapping features to plans—popular with SMB and mid‑market SaaS metered billing product catalog.
• Maxio (Chargify): B2B SaaS billing focused on complex usage models and sales‑led pricing, with event‑based metering and a flexible catalog geared toward overages and tailored plans events billing.
• Recurly: Subscription management with strong hosted payment pages, invoicing, and built‑in tax integrations (e.g., Avalara/Vertex), often chosen to minimize engineering effort for checkout and compliance hosted pages tax/compliance.
• Paddle (MoR): Merchant‑of‑record model that handles payments, tax remittance, and compliance for SaaS/digital sellers—an alternative for teams wanting to outsource liability and global sales ops overview what is MoR.