Verified against Claude · 2026-08-06
Write a post that disagrees with a common view in your field without reading as a dunk
Turn a genuine professional disagreement into a post that states the counter-position with real evidence, names what would change your mind, and preempts the strongest expected counter-reply — instead of a contrarian-for-clout take with nothing under it.
The prompt
Ready to copy — highlighted parts are example details you can swap.
THE COMMON VIEW OR PRACTICE YOU DISAGREE WITH Most operators believe every SaaS company should eventually move to usage-based pricing YOUR ACTUAL REASON FOR DISAGREEING I've watched 3 companies adopt it and reverse it within a year because it made revenue forecasting nearly impossible for their finance teams WHO HOLDS THE VIEW YOU'RE DISAGREEING WITH RevOps leads and pricing consultants who've mostly seen the model work at large-scale infrastructure companies HOW CONFIDENT YOU ACTUALLY ARE Fairly confident for companies under $20M ARR, genuinely uncertain past that size AUDIENCE Founders and RevOps leads evaluating a pricing model change WHY A DISAGREEMENT POST USUALLY FAILS IN ONE OF TWO WAYS A disagreement post that works reads as someone who has actually thought about the opposing view and still landed somewhere different, which is what earns substantive replies instead of a pile-on in either direction. A disagreement post that fails either dunks on a strawman version of the common view nobody actually holds, or states an opinion with no evidence behind it, inviting a reply that just restates the position it disagreed with, unchallenged, because nothing here gave anyone a reason to update. RULES 1. STATE THE COMMON VIEW ACCURATELY FIRST — in a form that RevOps leads and pricing consultants who've mostly seen the model work at large-scale infrastructure companies would recognize as a fair, non-strawmanned version of what they actually believe, before disagreeing with it. If you can't state it fairly, that's a sign you're arguing with a caricature, not the actual position — flag this if it seems true. 2. LEAD THE DISAGREEMENT WITH I've watched 3 companies adopt it and reverse it within a year because it made revenue forecasting nearly impossible for their finance teams AS EVIDENCE, not just the contrary opinion stated more forcefully — "X is wrong" restated with more conviction isn't an argument; the specific reason, example, or mechanism behind the disagreement is what makes it one. 3. CALIBRATE THE CONFIDENCE OF THE LANGUAGE TO Fairly confident for companies under $20M ARR, genuinely uncertain past that size — a post claiming certainty it doesn't actually have invites replies that attack the certainty rather than engage with the substance; if you're genuinely open to being wrong, say so plainly rather than performing more conviction than you have for effect. 4. NAME WHAT WOULD CHANGE YOUR MIND, if there's a genuine answer — a specific piece of evidence or counter-example that would move you. This is the single strongest signal that a disagreement is in good faith rather than a fixed position dressed as an open one. 5. ANTICIPATE THE STRONGEST COUNTER-REPLY you'd actually expect from RevOps leads and pricing consultants who've mostly seen the model work at large-scale infrastructure companies and address it directly in the post, rather than leaving it for the comments — addressing it up front changes the shape of the discussion that follows. FRAMING CONSTRAINT Do not use "hot take," "unpopular opinion but," or any framing device that announces the post is provocative before making the argument — let the disagreement itself carry that weight; announcing it in advance primes readers to react to the framing instead of the substance. OUTPUT The post, then a separate one-line note on the single most likely reply you'd get that would actually land — the strongest real objection, not a weak one easy to have already answered — so you know what to expect and aren't caught flat-footed by the first substantive pushback.
Customize
Optional — swap in your own details for the highlighted parts above.
Why this works
Requiring the common view to be stated in a form its actual holders would recognize as fair, before disagreeing with it, is the single mechanical difference between a post that generates real discussion and one that just gets dismissed by the exact audience it needed to reach. A strawmanned opening is visible instantly to anyone who genuinely holds the view, and their first reply becomes "that's not what we actually think," which derails the entire thread away from the substantive disagreement before it starts. Naming what would change your mind is doing real epistemic work, not just performing open-mindedness. A position with a stated falsification condition reads as considered and invites someone to actually try to meet that condition with a real counter-example, while a position with no stated condition for updating reads — correctly — as fixed regardless of what tone it's delivered in, which changes what kind of replies it draws. Preemptively addressing the strongest expected counter-reply, rather than leaving it for the comments, changes the actual shape of the ensuing discussion. A comment section where the obvious objection was already addressed in the post skips straight to the more interesting second-order discussion, while a comment section where the obvious objection wasn't addressed gets dominated by dozens of people independently making the exact same first point, which crowds out anything more substantive from ever surfacing. Banning framing devices like "hot take" or "unpopular opinion but" matters because these phrases prime the reader's reaction before the argument itself has been read — a reader told in advance that a post is provocative reads everything that follows through that lens and reacts to the framing, while the same argument presented without the warning label gets evaluated on its actual content, which is a meaningfully different and generally more substantive kind of engagement.
What you get back
Most RevOps leads I talk to still treat usage-based pricing as the natural endpoint every SaaS company eventually reaches. I think that's true for infrastructure products with genuinely variable cost-to-serve — and wrong for almost everyone else. I've watched three companies adopt it and reverse it within a year, all for the same reason: it made revenue forecasting nearly impossible for finance, not because customers hated it. I'd change my mind on this if someone showed me a company under $20M ARR that moved to usage-based pricing and kept forecast accuracy within 10% for two consecutive quarters — I haven't seen one yet, but I'm not claiming it can't exist. The obvious pushback is that seat-based pricing has its own well-documented problems. It does — I'm not arguing seat-based is better, just that "usage-based is the natural next step" skips past a forecasting cost most companies underestimate until they're living it.
Verified against
Claude Sonnet 5 · 2026-08-06
ChatGPT GPT-5.1 · 2026-08-06
Changelog
- 2026-08-06 — Initial publish for the rewritten linkedin category, verified against Claude (Sonnet 5) and ChatGPT (GPT-5.1).
Need this built into your business?
If a prompt isn't enough — Google Ads management, built and maintained for you — that's Scult's day job.
EXPLORE GOOGLE ADS MANAGEMENT
