“I'm having a fake conversation with a real person. So I'm having a conversation with this guy who was leaving me a one-star review saying I got this free for nine years and now I have to pay.”

War-Game the Uncomfortable Conversation Before Making the Aggressive Decision

Before making price changes or removing free access, Alex Prasad role-plays the entire customer conversation in his head — not just the angry review, but the full back-and-forth. If the company's side of that imagined conversation still feels reasonable, the decision is defensible. This mental habit of treating digital users like real people standing in front of you is his primary substitute for large-scale user research.