Skope

What do they actually do

Skope is a billing platform for companies that sell AI products and agents. It supports subscriptions and usage-based billing and is adding outcome-based pricing—charging when a defined result (for example, an agent completing a task) actually happens. Skope connects to the seller’s product events and the buyer’s system of record to verify that outcomes occurred before issuing charges, rather than relying on self-reported metrics (Product Hunt, Launch HN, DiscoverLLM). Customers get dashboards and APIs for real-time visibility into outcomes, usage, and invoices (Product Hunt, DiscoverLLM).

The company publicly launched a waitlist in mid-2025 and is running founder-led demos and pilots rather than a broad enterprise rollout. It’s a very small founding team (listed as two people on YC) working closely with early AI-native startups testing outcome or hybrid pricing models (Y Combinator, Fondo blog, LinkedIn/Y Combinator, Product Hunt).

Who are their target customer(s)

• AI-native startups selling autonomous agents or AI features: They want to bill for successful outcomes instead of per-seat or per-API call, but lack a trusted way to prove when a result happened, which creates disputes and undercharges value [Product Hunt, Launch HN].
• Product teams at mid-sized SaaS companies adding agent automation: They can’t reliably join agent events with customer records, so outcome billing requires manual wiring and brittle scripts; they need integrations and real-time visibility to avoid breaking flows [Launch HN, DiscoverLLM].
• Finance and operations teams running pricing and invoicing: Reconciling seller-reported events with buyer data causes disputes and manual work, so they avoid outcome pricing; they need auditable verification and controls to prevent chargebacks [Anand Chowdhary note, Fondo blog].
• Marketplaces and platforms routing third‑party agents: They must split payments and settle across many sellers but can’t automatically prove which seller delivered the result across tenants; they need a neutral verification layer to automate settlement [Launch HN, Anand Chowdhary note].
• Enterprise procurement and legal teams buying AI services: They won’t accept value-based contracts without clear, auditable proof of outcomes and dispute paths; billing must tie to verifiable events and preserve audit trails [Y Combinator, Fondo blog].

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

• First 10: Use the existing waitlist and YC/network intros to run high‑touch, founder‑led pilots that wire Skope into buyer systems and prove outcome verification in production; convert successful pilots into case studies (YC, Launch HN, Product Hunt).
• First 50: Package the pilot into a fixed‑scope “outcome verification starter” with prebuilt connectors and an SLA, and scale inbound via targeted webinars, demo days, and community co‑marketing for agent builders (Launch HN).
• First 100: Productize onboarding with SDKs and templates so teams can self‑serve, then add channel partnerships (agent marketplaces/platforms) while a small sales/CS team closes mid‑market deals that need audit/compliance (Launch HN).

What is the rough total addressable market

Top-down context:

The global subscription/recurring-billing software market is roughly $8–9B in 2025, a conservative proxy for Skope’s immediate category (Grand View Research, TBRC, Precedence Research). The broader AI software market is about $244B in 2025, showing the upside if outcome pricing becomes common (Statista).

Bottom-up calculation:

If outcome-based models become relevant to ~10–20% of billing spend, and we assume an $8.24B baseline, Skope’s near-term SAM for outcome billing would be ~$824M–$1.65B globally. This reflects the subset of customers that need verifiable, cross-tenant outcome billing (Grand View Research).

Assumptions:

• Outcome-based pricing becomes meaningful for 10–20% of billing over the next few years in AI-forward segments.
• Vendors will purchase specialized verification/billing tools rather than building in-house for cross‑tenant proof.
• Skope competes within standard billing budgets and pricing norms typical of billing platforms.

Who are some of their notable competitors

• Stripe Billing: General-purpose billing for subscriptions and invoicing; widely adopted by startups and SMBs.
• Zuora: Enterprise subscription management and billing used by larger SaaS and services companies.
• Chargebee: Subscription management and recurring billing for SaaS and digital businesses.
• Metronome: Modern usage-based billing platform used by data/infra and AI companies.
• Orb: Usage-based pricing and billing with metering and pricing infrastructure for software companies.