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[ About SPP ]

Pricing architecture across every market transition.
Including this one.

We design pricing architecture for B2B software companies and ship it into LevelSetter for your team to operate continuously. Architecting today’s ecosystem, not yesterday’s retrospective.

SPP designs the three-decisions pricing architecture (licensing, packaging, pricing) for B2B software companies, then ships it into LevelSetter for the customer’s team to operate continuously. Architecture decisions are made against what actually happened: net-price transaction data, competitive intelligence on deals actually landed (not published list), interviews with both customers and competitor customers, and sales-conversation analysis for the patterns the data alone can’t capture. Each architecture sharpens the pattern library that informs the next.

The credential isn’t a tenure at one named-brand SaaS. It’s pattern recognition across $481B+ in B2B software transactions, accumulated through every market transition since the SaaS era began. That breadth is the architecture-recognition no single-company resume can build.

$481B+
In B2B software new-business
and renewal transactions observed.
50+
Documented exit events
with the architecture intact.
Today
Architecting across every shape of B2B software — application and infrastructure, AI-native and traditional, open source and proprietary, horizontal and vertical.
Engagement led by
Chris Mele
CEO, Software Pricing Partners · Ranked #1 on OpenView’s list of B2B SaaS pricing experts · Surrounded by a senior team that has held CFO, CPO, and CIO seats inside software companies · You get the senior in the room, not their junior
The origin

Built from the operator’s seat.
Not the consulting bench.

SPP’s leadership ran B2B software companies before advising them. Every engagement draws on direct experience with licensing architecture, deal-desk governance, and the transaction data that reveals what actually closes — not what surveys suggest.

The methodology was built on real implementations: pricing architectures that survived PE due diligence, editions that scaled with enterprise sales motions, and value metrics that held through acquisition.

Chris Mele founded SPP after running his own software company through a perpetual-to-subscription transition in 2008. He learned firsthand that pricing architecture is the lever every B2B software CEO eventually has to pull. Two decades later, SPP has been the pricing architect across $481B+ in B2B software transactions, through every market transition since.

The signal

A boutique pricing firm, a solo consultant, a generalist consultancy, an in-house pricing hire — each leans on one credential. SPP brings three structural advantages no single credential can match: pattern recognition across $481B+ in B2B software transactions, continuous architecture (not recommendations decks), and LevelSetter, the platform your team operates.
One credential. Three structural differentiators.

The proof

Architecture that holds.
Through the exit.

Our clients have been acquired by
Dell  |  Oracle  |  IBM  |  Siemens  |  Schneider Electric  |  Vista Equity  |  Thoma Bravo  |  Francisco Partners
8x
ARR growth at BambooHR · $22M to $180M+

“We were stalled out at $22M in ARR. Then we engaged with SPP and were north of $180M not long thereafter. I attribute a lot of that success to SPP helping us get our pricing strategy right.”

Jeff Adams · Former CRO, BambooHR
The leadership

Operators who ran software companies.
Then built the firm.

Every member of SPP’s leadership team has held a senior seat inside a B2B software company before joining the firm. Operational experience is what separates a recommendation that sounds right from an architecture that holds under pressure.

01.A

Chris Mele
CEO

Former CEO of a B2B software company recognized as an Intuit Top 10 Developer and Blue Diamond Award winner. Ranked #1 on OpenView’s list of B2B SaaS pricing experts. Business of Software speaker, regular keynote at software-company sales kickoffs, Forbes Tech Council contributor. Ernst & Young alumnus where he helped build the first credit-card system on Netscape for Bank of America.

01.B

Jordan Cannon
CPO

Former senior AWS architect at Mission Cloud. Heads AI and machine learning at SPP. Owns product and engineering for LevelSetter, the platform that turns SPP’s pattern library into real-time answers inside live deals. The ML models he builds detect pricing drift before it hits revenue and surface buyer-behavior signals the deal desk can’t see manually.

01.C

Nikesh Parajuli
Head of Front-End & UX

Leads front-end engineering and user experience for LevelSetter. Builds the interfaces that turn SPP’s transaction analysis into clear, decision-ready views for pricing leaders, deal teams, and CEOs operating the architecture.

01.D

Blair Swogger
CFO

Former CFO of a SaaS company. Has served as CEO, COO, and CFO across software and consumer-product companies. Owns SPP’s margin and deal-modeling practice, the financial pressure-test that tells clients whether a pricing move expands gross margin or erodes it.

01.E

Giancarlo Proenca
CIO

Leads competitive intelligence across SPP’s industry verticals. Owns one of the largest proprietary libraries of competitor street pricing and discount behavior in B2B software, what competitors actually close at, not what they publish.

Trusted by B2B software companies
SugarCRM BambooHR LiveCode Mission Cloud Invoca OSIsoft Nearmap Apple Wpromote Bentley Systems Lockheed Martin Avant Alfresco Acquia Hexagon
The methodology

Define. Deploy. Defend.

The scope adapts to your business. The methodology doesn’t. Every engagement runs through three phases that have held across every market transition since SaaS began.

02.A

Define the
architecture

Transaction analysis, customer conversations, competitive intelligence, and simulation against your actual data, before anything changes. The three-decisions (licensing, packaging, pricing) are decided as one coherent system, not stitched together by committee.

02.B

Deploy alongside
your team

Sales enablement on real deals, go-to-market rollout, discount governance, and CRM integration through LevelSetter. Your team operates the architecture from the start, with SPP guiding through architecture iterations and renewal sprints.

02.C

Defend continuously
across every quarter

Strategic reviews, competitive response, and continuous monitoring inside LevelSetter, so your team gets sharper at this every quarter, not more dependent on us. Pricing isn’t a project to finish. It’s a capability your team operates.

See the full methodology for the architecture-decision sequence and the rollout cadence.

The culture

We hire operators.
Not consultants.

Every person at SPP has run a function inside a software company, sales, product, finance, engineering, data. We respect that experience; we’ve defended pricing decisions in our own boardrooms. But one or two companies of pricing experience teaches you one company’s playbook. The patterns that hold true across every industry and software-company shape only show up after hundreds of billions in transactions, observed across every market transition since the SaaS era began. That operational experience plus pattern recognition is what separates a recommendation that sounds right from an architecture that holds under pressure.

If you’ve led pricing, packaging, or go-to-market at a B2B software company and want to do this work full-time, we’re always interested in talking. See open roles →

Frequently asked questions

SPP designs the three-decisions pricing architecture (licensing, packaging, pricing) for B2B software companies, ships it into LevelSetter, and stays on call for renewal sprints and architecture iterations. The customer’s team operates LevelSetter day-to-day. See our outcomes for documented results across 50+ exit events.
Large generalist firms advise on everything across every industry. Breadth has a cost: pricing is one of many practices, and B2B software pricing is a subspecialty of a subspecialty. SPP works exclusively in B2B software pricing architecture, with the largest proprietary transaction dataset in the category and operators who’ve run software companies, not advisors learning on your engagement. See how we compare.
A boutique pricing firm typically leans on one credential: a former operator at a named-brand SaaS. The same one-source-over-one-tenure pattern shows up with generalist consultancies, solo consultants, and even the senior pricing lead a CEO might hire internally. SPP brings three structural differentiators none of them can match: pattern recognition across $481B+ in B2B software transactions, continuous engagement (not project-based recommendations), and LevelSetter, the operating platform your team runs day-to-day. The pattern library is the moat, not the resume.
CEO of Software Pricing Partners. Former CEO of a B2B software company (Intuit Top 10 Developer, Blue Diamond Award) where he ran a perpetual-to-subscription transition in 2008. Ranked #1 on OpenView’s list of SaaS pricing experts. Business of Software speaker, regular keynote at software-company sales kickoffs, Forbes Tech Council contributor. Ernst & Young alumnus where he helped build the first credit-card system on Netscape for Bank of America.
SPP works across B2B software companies serving any vertical: healthcare, financial services, manufacturing, retail, public sector, defense, education, and beyond. Two kinds of patterns matter, and a real pattern library has to carry both. Some patterns are vertical-specific (regulatory dynamics in healthcare, channel structure in security, procurement cycles in education) and only emerge after architecting pricing inside that vertical. Others travel across verticals (licensing, packaging, pricing, deal structure) and only emerge after observing hundreds of B2B software architectures. SPP brings both. See the track record on the outcomes page.

Hire the firm with the pattern library.
Not the resume.

Three structural differentiators no individual operator, boutique, or new hire can match: pattern recognition across $481B+ in B2B software transactions, continuous architecture, and the platform your team runs. Renewable. Each renewal is one we earn.