An Upsell Framework for Predictions & Insights

Crunchbase launched AI-powered Predictions and Insights in 2025. It forecasts funding rounds, acquisitions, and IPOs using the company’s proprietary data.

It lived on the company profile, Crunchbase’s core product surface, where users assessed companies, validated opportunities, and chose their next action. From February to May 2024, profiles drew ~11.4M desktop pageviews from ~47.8K unique users.

It was a flagship new capability, but Crunchbase’s existing upsell pattern had never been applied to a feature like this. There was no precedent for how much of a prediction to reveal to a free or anonymous user, or how CTAs should differentiate Pro from Business.

Audited how upsells worked across the product: what was obfuscated, where, and how inconsistently. There was no shared logic for what should be hidden versus shown, so teams were making that call ad hoc. This surfaced the core problem the layered framework would solve.

Instead of thinking in plans (Free, Pro, Business), the problem was reframed as depth of information, using an apple as the model. This gave stakeholders a real-world model for how to think about the different SKUs.

Predictions & Insights was the highlight of the 2025 launch, making it the top priority surface for applying this framework. Early in the design process, it became clear that the Growth Insight and Growth Prediction cards both contained a mix of Pro- and Business-level content, so the goal was to clearly define what belonged to each tier in the anonymous and free experience.

A few principles guided the redesign

The flow was designed to match the layer logic:

• Hover states disclose which tier a feature belongs to before the user commits to a click
• Pro tier interactions route to a self-serve signup or trial flow
• Business tier interactions route to the sales-assisted scheduling flow

This way, the visual pattern, the copy, and the routing logic all reinforce the same mental model.

Not every gated element is a full card. Some are small inline data points, like a single stat or chart segment. Worked with front-end engineering to give obfuscation a lighter visual treatment for these smaller elements, so gated content felt consistent with the rest of the launch instead of heavy or clunky.

Rather than staying the sole gatekeeper of every upsell decision, I worked with stakeholders, the Director of Pricing & Packaging, front-end engineers, and the design team to build a decision framework individual product teams could apply themselves: when to obfuscate, which data point belongs to which SKU, and where to direct customers. This let the pattern scale past my own bandwidth.

The framework also kept every upsell path consistent, so customers could clearly understand the value Crunchbase offered relative to their needs.

Showcase the value up front, like free samples, instead of locking everything behind a paywall.