About LaunchDarkly

LaunchDarkly is a feature management platform that helps software teams reduce the risk of shipping bad software and AI applications while accelerating release velocity. With progressive rollouts, real-time monitoring, instant rollbacks, targeted experiments, and rapid AI iteration, teams can ship innovation consistently and confidently. Trusted by 5,500+ enterprises—including a quarter of the Fortune 500—LaunchDarkly powers exceptional customer experiences and business outcomes worldwide.

Meet Nate Graf

Nate Graf is a Senior Engineering Manager at LaunchDarkly, where he leads the implementation of monetization strategy across the product and internal systems. Over the past five years, his team has played a key role in LaunchDarkly’s transition from seat-based to usage-based pricing. Nate is passionate about combining product-led growth, thoughtful pricing, and great engineering to deliver exceptional customer experiences that drive business growth.

The Opportunity: Enabling Growth Through Usage-Based Billing

Historically, LaunchDarkly monetized its self-serve offering via seat-based pricing. But as the product evolved and more teams within organizations began adopting it, this model created friction. “If a new division at a bank wanted to try LaunchDarkly, they couldn’t just start using it. The seat-based model created barriers,” Nate explains.

To better align value with usage—and unlock growth—LaunchDarkly moved toward a usage-based billing model. This shift allowed new users to explore the platform freely, with billing tied directly to infrastructure consumption. “We wanted to reduce friction and let people discover the product on their own terms. Usage-based pricing gave us that,” says Nate.

The Decision: Why Buy vs. Build

Transitioning to usage-based billing was a major undertaking. “We considered building it ourselves. We had the technical chops to do it,” says Nate. His team even wrote an internal spec and estimated the engineering lift. The reality? A minimum of 4–6 months to get something production-worthy—likely with limited flexibility and a long tail of edge cases to maintain.

“Billing is complex. You can’t predict every pricing model you might want to try down the line. If your answer to every new idea is ‘that’ll take two months to build,’ you’re slowing the business down,” he explains. Ultimately, LaunchDarkly decided to partner with a specialized platform that could deliver both speed and long-term flexibility.

Choosing Orb: What Stood Out

LaunchDarkly ran a rigorous evaluation process. They needed a partner that could:

• Support complex, evolving billing models—like pay-as-you-go and commit-plus-overage
  
• Handle “unknown unknowns” with a modular, future-proof architecture
  
• Offer engineering ergonomics like strong SDKs (Go, in their case) and SQL-like metric flexibility
  
• Move fast and deliver reliably—especially in critical edge cases
  

Orb exceeded expectations across the board. “Your CTO got back to us the very next day with detailed responses to a long list of advanced billing scenarios. Orb was the only vendor that supported everything we needed—right out of the box,” Nate recalls.

Equally important was the caliber of the Orb team. “You could tell immediately—this is a team that knows usage-based billing deeply. The people we worked with weren’t just sales folks, they were former engineers and builders who understood the domain inside out.”

Orb was the only vendor that supported everything we needed—right out of the box,”
_{Nate Graf, Senior Engineering Manager @ LaunchDarkly}

Implementation: Fast, Focused, and Collaborative

From contract signature to go-live, the implementation was smooth and highly collaborative. “The care and responsiveness we saw before signing continued afterward. Weekly calls, fast turnaround on fixes, even a same-day bug patch—Orb was right there with us,” says Nate.

Even larger feature requests were handled with transparency and accountability. “You didn’t overpromise. You gave us a realistic timeline, and then you hit it. That kind of maturity is rare in vendors.”

The care and responsiveness we saw before signing continued afterward. Weekly calls, fast turnaround on fixes, even a same-day bug patch—Orb was right there with us,”
_{Nate Graf, Senior Engineering Manager @ LaunchDarkly}

Live with Orb: What’s Changed

LaunchDarkly’s self-serve segment is now fully powered by Orb. Key improvements include:

• Greater confidence in system reliability: “Before Orb, we had unexpected delays processing usage data that would pop up from time to time. Now we have confidence that customer usage reporting is always up to date and accurate.”
  
• Real-time visibility: Usage that previously took up to 8 hours to show now appears within seconds
  
• Transparency and auditability: Orb’s event-based system provides a detailed, traceable billing foundation
  
• Improved internal efficiency: “We’re spending less engineering time debugging billing issues. We’re not wondering, ‘Is this on our end or the vendor’s?’”

Before Orb, we had unexpected delays processing usage data that would pop up from time to time. Now we have confidence that customer usage reporting is always up to date and accurate.”
_{Nate Graf, Senior Engineering Manager @ LaunchDarkly}

Looking Ahead: A Strategic Partnership

LaunchDarkly sees Orb not just as a tool, but as a partner in its monetization journey. “We didn’t just bet on your product. We bet on your team,” Nate says.

Future areas of interest include:

• Simulations: “I haven’t used it yet, but I’m very excited. Every pricing team should be modeling what a pricing change would’ve billed historically before going live.”
  
• Strategic input: “I’ve already pinged your team a few times to think through pricing ideas. You’re working with hundreds of customers—there’s a lot of value in that shared knowledge.”
  

Final Word

Asked to sum up the relationship, Nate puts it simply:

“Orb is a reliable, expert partner helping us unlock a more scalable, flexible business model. You don’t just say the right things—you deliver on them.”