Clay’s monetization lead on scaling a credit-based model, sustainable growth, and more | Zona Zhang

Описание: In this episode of Thank You for Vibe Pricing, Chargebee’s new series on scaling AI monetization, we're joined by Zona Zhang, who leads monetization at Clay (https://clay.com/).

Zona walks us through Clay's deeply value-led credit-based pricing model (among the 6 consequential GTM bets that helped them grow from $1m-$100m ARR in 2 years)—why monetization sits at the intersection of finance and product, how they’ve designed credits as a currency for unlocking modules of usage and exceptional, full-funnel growth, why and how they iterated on differentiating Clay’s enterprise pricing from the very early days, how they introduced credit rollovers after observing high "restart rates" from episodic users, why engineers at Clay review AI P&Ls as a core part of the product development process, and Zona's thesis on how AI monetization will evolve in the coming years, and much more.

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Subscribe to Thank You for Vibe Pricing:

YouTube:    • Thank You for Vibe Pricing  
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1aqJlEx...
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast...

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Check out recent episodes:

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Chapters:

00:00 - Episode highlights
00:57 - Episode intro
03:37 - Zona’s career path
04:47 - Why pricing sits under finance at Clay
06:37 - AI credits as “currency”
07:20 - Reverse trials and fixing the education gap
08:57 - Pricing “modules of usage”
10:40 - What sets Clay’s PLG motion apart
13:48 - The thesis behind credit rollovers
15:45 - Strategies for solving usage friction
18:58 - Formulating Clay’s enterprise pricing
24:05 - Scaling pricing across GTM motions
25:30 - Two things that matter for discounting
27:42 - Unit economics and engineers
31:24 - The billion-dollar AI pricing question
34:36 - “We look at dashboards a lot”

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Referenced:

Introducing Clay Pricing 3.0: https://www.clay.com/blog/introducing...
Varun Anand (Co-founder, Clay):   / vaanand  
Kareem Amin (Co-founder, Clay):   / kareemamin  
The GTM Inflection Points That Powered Clay to a $1B+ Valuation: https://review.firstround.com/the-gtm...
Asana: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asana,_Inc
Custom Signals (a Clay feature): https://www.clay.com/signals
Snowflake: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowfla....
Databricks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Databricks
OpenAI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenAI
Everett Berry (Head of GTM engineering, Clay):   / everettberry  

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Connect with Zona:

LinkedIn:   / zona-xiaotian-zhang  

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Connect with Vinay:

LinkedIn:   / vinayseshadri  

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Connect with Ariela:

LinkedIn:   / ariela-bitran-70373429  

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About Chargebee:

Chargebee builds foundational billing and monetization infrastructure for the dynamic, fast-scaling AI-era business models — from seats and usage, to agents, outcomes, and hybrid structures. Built for product, finance, and GTM teams that treat pricing as a growth lever.