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How m3ter Is Building a New Category Without Saying So: Griffin Parry’s GTM Journey

In the age of AI integration and evolving SaaS business models, usage-based pricing has become increasingly essential for B2B software companies. But implementing this shift presents a formidable challenge for established enterprises that have already invested heavily in their tech stacks. That’s the exact problem Griffin Parry set out to solve.

In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Griffin Parry, CEO and Co-Founder of m3ter, shared his journey of building a data infrastructure company that’s raised $31.5 million to help successful B2B software companies upgrade their monetization capabilities without disrupting their existing systems.

When Experience Becomes Opportunity

Griffin’s path to founding m3ter wasn’t theoretical – it was born from direct experience with the problem his company now solves.

“Classic founders tackling a problem they experienced firsthand,” Griffin explains. “So I had my first business was a cloud infrastructure business, I should say our first business. I’m part of a co-founding team of two and that was a cloud infrastructure business and it was focused on the video games space and we eventually sold it to Amazon.”

That company had implemented usage-based pricing, which Griffin credits as “one of the reasons that it was reasonably successful.” But success came with a cost: “We had a lot of pain associated with our pricing model or what I now think of as our business model. A lot of operational pain around billing, but also a lot of go-to-market challenges about a lack of flexibility about how we priced.”

The insight deepened during his three years at AWS following the acquisition. “Interestingly they’re also a usage-based pricing company. And so what we spotted is that they had all the same problems that we did, albeit on a much bigger scale.”

This revelation crystallized the opportunity: “Broadly we had this pain. AWS has this pain. We think this pain is everywhere amongst sort of software and technology companies who have more complicated usage-based pricing.”

Finding the First Customers Through Discovery

Unlike many founders who build first and sell later, Griffin and his co-founder took a more methodical approach.

“We had a thesis. We thought this was a problem, but we were going to commit a big chunk of our lives trying to solve this problem. So we wanted to make sure that it was out there and widespread,” Griffin recalls.

The m3ter team conducted “60 or 70 conversations” with potential customers before writing a single line of code. From those discussions, they recruited “about five of those companies to be our initial design partners.”

This approach created a direct pipeline to their first paying customers. “We’re building the product with that initial group, and so they naturally became paying customers,” Griffin explains. “We had quite a high degree of predictability about when we were going to get paid for the first time.”

The Go-to-Market Pivot: Meeting Customers Where They Are

As m3ter moved beyond those initial customers, they faced a classic category creation challenge: how to position a solution that’s fundamentally different from what the market expects.

Griffin found that customers approached m3ter with a narrow view of their problem and preconceived ideas about the solution. “They see themselves as having billing pain. So every time they have to send out invoices, it’s very complicated and painful and risky,” he explains.

The team initially tried creating new category terminology, but quickly learned a valuable lesson: “We did spend some time going, ‘hey, we’re a pricing operations platform,’ or a whole bunch of different things that we experimented with, but people would go, ‘well, what’s that?’ And that was a waste of a cycle trying to explain it.”

Their solution? Meet prospects exactly where they were searching: “We just go, ‘oh, yeah, we’re a billing infrastructure, billing solution. We’ll make your billing work.’ And they’re like, ‘okay, great, because that’s what I’m looking for.'”

Only after establishing this initial connection could Griffin expand the conversation to m3ter’s full value proposition. “Once I’ve got them engaged, I can talk to them about everything else that they need to solve for and why m3ter is a brilliant solution that does that,” he explains.

Building the Right Go-to-Market Engine

Finding the right sales approach proved another crucial lesson. m3ter targets finance and operations leaders at mature companies with deliberative decision-making processes – not exactly the audience for an impulsive purchase.

“The best way to get to those buyers is actually via the vendors that have trusted relationships with them already,” Griffin reveals. “So the real engine room of our go-to-market are partners, so technology partners, some consulting partners that sell to those people.”

But there’s a sequencing challenge: “No one’s going to partner with you if you don’t already have great customers. And so you do have to go through the hard yards. We’re a sales-led motion. Most of our first big cohort of customers have come through direct sales and you have to put a lot of effort into it, but it’s necessary.”

This insight led to a carefully balanced approach between direct sales and partner channels, with clear recognition that the early direct work was essential to enable the more scalable partner motion.

Fundraising Against Market Trends

m3ter’s fundraising journey reflects both fortunate timing and strategic decision-making. Founded in late 2020 during “absolutely the go-times when it comes to raising money for SaaS businesses,” they quickly raised a seed round.

But conditions had changed dramatically by the time they sought their Series A. Rather than delay, Griffin and his team took a contrarian approach. “We thought, ‘right, let’s zig when everybody else is zagging. We really believe in what we’re doing. Let’s go and find a high-quality investor who shares that confidence and then we’ll really be well set up for the years to come.'”

Griffin approaches investor conversations as a “dance,” looking for partners who engage thoughtfully with the company’s ideas rather than those who simply assess or recite generic advice. “You’re looking to see how they react to what you’re talking about and the extent to which they’ll start playing with the idea with you,” he explains.

The Vision: Category Creation Through Problem-Solving

Looking ahead, Griffin envisions m3ter as a $50-100 million ARR company in 3-5 years. By that point, he believes the market will better understand the category they’re creating.

“I’m kind of having to hide that light a little bit under a bush at the moment,” Griffin admits. “But in three or five years time, I’d like people to go, ‘oh, that’s a really interesting company with vision. And they’ve created a new category… data infrastructure that helps companies upgrade their monetization stacks.'”

This long-term vision illustrates a crucial lesson for founders building innovative solutions: sometimes the most effective path to category creation isn’t declaring it upfront, but solving real problems so well that the category eventually defines itself.

As B2B software continues its shift toward more complex, usage-based pricing models — accelerated by AI features with variable costs — Griffin’s journey with m3ter offers a masterclass in strategic product positioning and go-to-market execution that meets customers where they are while still building toward a transformative long-term vision.