Investors
Traditional commercial due diligence relies on customer surveys and management interviews to assess pricing health. That takes 8-12 weeks, produces stated preferences rather than revealed behavior, and delivers a report that's already aging by close.
SPP's pricing due diligence runs directly against the target's transaction data — what customers actually paid, not what they said they'd pay. The analysis runs in weeks, not months, because the data already exists. And the output isn't a slide deck — it's an instrumented model your operating team inherits at close through LevelSetter.
Chris Mele — CEO, Software Pricing Partners
Ranked #1 on OpenView's list of B2B SaaS pricing experts. Former B2B software CEO — built a venture-backed company ($13M raised) recognized as an Intuit Top 10 Developer and voted the #1 business management solution by Kitchen & Bath Business Magazine. Business of Software keynote speaker.
Hired SPP as a client in 2008. Joined the firm in 2013 and built LevelSetter from the problems he'd lived firsthand.
At SPP, we help Investors successfully determine
upside potential including:
Pre-acquisition pricing due diligence
Before the deal closes, SPP's experts analyze the target's transaction data to surface what traditional diligence misses. Discount waterfalls, net price realization by customer group, packaging architecture gaps, value metric alignment — married with competitive intelligence on how the market actually prices around the target. The output is a pricing health assessment that quantifies the upside opportunity and identifies the risks, built on revealed preference from real deals rather than stated preference from surveys.
Post-acquisition pricing transformation
The pricing upside identified in diligence doesn't capture itself. SPP works with portfolio company leadership through the full Define, Deploy, Defend cycle — restructuring packaging, fixing discount governance, selecting the right value metrics, and deploying the infrastructure to operationalize it. Starting at close with the diligence data already in hand compresses the timeline and captures value while the acquisition thesis is still fresh — not 12-18 months later when momentum has stalled.
Diligence that becomes the operating system
Most due diligence deliverables sit in a data room and never get opened again. SPP's pricing diligence is built on LevelSetter — the same platform that surfaces the upside pre-acquisition becomes the tool that captures it post-close. The operating team inherits the discount waterfall analysis, the customer group mapping, the margin instrumentation, and ongoing competitive pricing intelligence on day one. As competitors move their packaging and pricing over a 3-5 year hold period, your portfolio company sees it in real time — not at the next board review.
Portfolio-level pricing oversight
For firms managing multiple B2B software companies, SPP provides centralized visibility across the portfolio. Each company's pricing health — discount trends, margin by customer group, packaging performance, competitive positioning shifts — monitored through a consistent framework rather than ad-hoc reviews. Your operating partners see which portfolio companies have pricing upside, which are leaking margin, and where intervention creates the most value.
BambooHR: Why hypergrowth forced a pricing foundation reset.
BambooHR's leadership on why rapid growth compounds pricing problems rather than solving them — and why they chose a software-specific pricing firm over generalist consultancies and larger advisory firms after 18 months of evaluating the market.