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When MARKT-PILOT™ appointed Stephen Fauth and Dr. Martin Ruth as co-CEOs, the question wasn’t who would lead. It was how to multiply leadership capacity at a pivotal moment. Two leaders with genuinely complementary expertise, built over years of working together. One shared ambition: translate customer needs into product capabilities in weeks, not quarters, and scale MP ONE™ into the global industry standard for Pricing Performance.
The headline of your announcement is accelerating innovation and global growth, not the leadership change. What’s actually happening in the market right now that made this the right moment?
In fact, MARKT-PILOT has an established customer base and strong credibility in a market that’s already starting to adapt. We felt the runway to maintain that advantage was not infinite. So we wanted to move fast to set up our organization in a way that optimizes our ability to make decisions, drive innovation, and get capabilities to customers as quickly as possible.
Martin Ruth: Stephen’s read on the market is exactly right, and it’s the starting point for why this structure makes sense. We see manufacturers facing a genuinely new reality: many are still operating with a relatively static pricing model. We’re there to bridge them from static to dynamic. And we have the product, the customer proof, and the operational foundation to do that; to establish a real leadership position in what we call the Pricing Performance category. The co-CEO model is the organizational response to that opportunity.
A lot of co-CEO announcements emphasize the division of responsibilities. You’ve both talked about this differently, more as a coming-together of complementary strengths. What’s the distinction you’re drawing?
Martin Ruth: Honestly, that distinction matters to us. Yes, the functional areas are clearly defined. Stephen owns everything market-facing: sales, marketing, customer success, professional services, product development. I own what I’d call the engine: finance, people, business operations, legal and compliance. But that’s the frame, not the story.
The real story is that Stephen and I have been building this working relationship for a long time. Our perspectives, our instincts, our areas of experience; they fit together in a way that isn’t engineered. We’ve grown into this over years of working alongside each other at MARKT-PILOT. Neither of us is half of a CEO. We’re two people who make each other more effective in the domains that matter most for where this company is going.
Stephen Fauth: Martin put it really well. I’d add: the way our strengths combine is what allows the structure to do what it’s supposed to do. I can stay genuinely close to the market and to customers; close enough that what we learn from them reaches the product organization directly and quickly. Martin can focus the attention that complex, fast-scaling operations actually require. Neither of us must dilute what we’re best at. That’s the real multiplication.
Stephen, you talk about getting customer insight to deployed capability in weeks, not quarters. What does this structure actually unlock to make that possible?
Stephen Fauth: A few things. Part of it is how our product organization is set up, using the latest tools, modern deployment practices, and a real engineering culture. We’ve proven that on scale.
But the more important piece is the connection between go-to-market and product. The people in constant contact with customers, and I mean genuinely constant, not quarterly business reviews, need to have the most direct possible line into the team that turns ideas into reality. When that connection is tight and the feedback loop is short, customer insight translates into product decisions very quickly. That’s how you get to weeks instead of quarters. And this structure is specifically built to keep that connection tight.
Martin Ruth: And from where I sit, what supports that is making sure the operational infrastructure doesn’t slow it down. Because the hidden risk as you scale is that your own internal systems start to create friction; approvals, reporting structures, cross-entity coordination. My job is to make sure those things are designed well enough that they accelerate Stephen’s side rather than constrain it.
Martin, let’s stay with you on that. Stephen drives the pace of innovation. What does keeping the engine healthy actually look like as MARKT-PILOT scales globally?
The goal is that no matter how fast Stephen and the team push on the market side, the infrastructure is already ready for it. That’s what I mean by building ahead of demand, not catching up, not reacting, but being structurally prepared. That’s the promise I own in this model.
You’ve both pushed back on the idea of ‘splitting the CEO role.’ What does the multiplication actually let you do that a single CEO running hard couldn’t?
Stephen Fauth: It comes back to why we structured things this way in the first place. Connecting customer needs to our product, fast, accurately, continuously, is the core of what we do. This structure means I can give that the full focus it needs. I can be genuinely present with customers, with the market, and with the go-to-market team. The feedback loop stays open and tight. That closed-loop communication is what innovation depends on, and it’s what tends to get squeezed first when a single leader is stretched too thin.
Martin Ruth: And that’s exactly the ‘dynamic’ Stephen is describing what I try to prevent on the operational side. What you often see in businesses our size, or even bigger, is that at some point the systems can’t keep up with top-line growth. That becomes a hidden brake. Because I can focus real, sustained attention on exactly that, I can make sure it doesn’t happen to us.
So yes, not two half-CEOs. Two leaders each bring their full attention and their full expertise to the dimension of the business they know best. That’s what the multiplication actually looks like.
Companies like Netflix and Salesforce used this model at critical inflection points. The skepticism usually is: two CEOs mean two cooks. How do you answer that?
Martin Ruth: Skepticism is fair when the model is forced. When you take two people with overlapping instincts, put them in a room, and divide a job they were both trying to do. That’s not what happened here. Stephen and I didn’t arrive at this position from the outside as a pair. We have built our working relationship at MARKT-PILOT over the years. We’ve learned how to align, where our thinking differs and why, and how to make decisions that are better for having two perspectives on them rather than one.
I’ll say it plainly: I think a single-CEO model at this stage of MARKT-PILOT’s growth would have been the riskier choice. Not because either of us couldn’t do it but because one person would inevitably have been spread across everything we can now tackle with full focus.
Stephen Fauth: Martin said it directly and I agree. For us, trust and familiarity were already there. We were already operating in a way that was generating the outcomes the business needed and that our board expected. This was about formalizing that and giving the organization the clarity and the authority to keep executing that way at greater scale.
The ‘two cooks’ problem comes from ambiguity. We don’t have that. The domains are clear, the accountability is shared, and the working relationship is real.
Six years, 200-plus manufacturers across Europe and North America. What does the next chapter look like. What should the industry expect?
Stephen Fauth: First: continuity matters. The 200+ customers already with us, and the ones coming on board right now, they signed up for a specific value proposition, and that has to get better, not just different. The aftermarket business is under real pressure right now, and our customers need a partner that moves at the pace of their market, not ours. That means driving innovation together, not just delivering it to them. The best things we build will come from that collaboration.
Martin Ruth: Stephen said it well. What I’d add: MP ONE™ is and will be the most comprehensive unified Pricing Performance platform in the market. The next phase is making it the industry standard. Not just growing the count of customers using it, but establishing genuine category leadership; so that when a manufacturer thinks about dynamic pricing for the OEM aftermarket, MARKT-PILOT is the reference point. That’s the ambition, and the structure we’ve built is designed to get us there.
Last question: what does this model mean for the people inside MARKT-PILOT, and for the customers who work with you every day?
Stephen Fauth: For our customers, it means a partner that is structurally set up to stay close to them and move fast. The decisions that matter to them, product direction, market responsiveness, are owned at the level closest to where those needs come from. That’s not accidental. That’s by design.
Martin Ruth: And for our team, it means clarity. Everyone knows who is responsible for what, and they know that both of us are genuinely accountable for the outcome, not just our respective corners of it. Growth at scale has a way of dispersing leadership. This model is our answer to that. Two people who trust each other, who know where they complement each other, and who don’t have to choose between market speed and operational substance. We’re doing both together.