[feifan]

If you also have a direct line to your users, you could try asking them how much they'd be willing to pay for either some new feature that's about to come out, or for the right to early-access. Get maybe 3–5 data points and you should have a pretty solid case to management (either to charge retroactively for existing features, to charge new users for existing features, or to charge all users for upcoming features).

[wonder_er]

rather than ask "how much they'd be willing to pay", it might be more compelling to simply say "It will cost $X for early access, limited to X slots, in exchange, {we do such-and-such}."

If they say "OK, great", you've got immediate revenue to bring back to your management, and a strong case to continue doing more of the same.

Customers routinely over-and-under-estimate future value, compared to what they're then willing to pay.

They're often wrong in both directions, they usually won't pay as much as they think they will, _and_ they'll often pay far more than they think you will.

There are many, many reasons for both kinds of errors, many of which can be de-risked in advance and safely ameliorated.