In the PIE-Cast Studio: Co-CEO Stephen Fauth on Creating the Pricing Performance Category

Contents

• Having Domain Expertise Isn't Enough Anymore
• Disrupt Yourself Before Someone Else Does
• The Operational Power of the Co-CEO Model
• From Customer Idea to Working Prototype Overnight
• Listen to the Full Episode

MARKT-PILOT™ Co-CEO Stephen Fauth joined Jacob Parks, President of Profitable Ideas Exchange (PIE), on the PIE-Cast. The episode, "The Growth Engine", aired September 22, 2026 and is available on the Profitable Ideas Exchange website or on Apple Podcasts. This season, the PIE-Cast explores how firms build their growth engines through client relationships, talent, organizational models, and metrics.

Stephen Fauth brings more than two decades of enterprise technology experience to the conversation. His message is clear, the future of SaaS belongs to companies that:

• build with their customers,

• move fast,

• and question their own business model before the market does.

That conviction guided MARKT-PILOT when we created Pricing Performance as a new category.

When technology shakes up a market, many companies protect their legacy core and wait. Our Co-CEO puts it this way:

I'm the one that when the building is on fire, I want to run inside.

Co-CEO, MARKT-PILOT Stephen Fauth

Having Domain Expertise Isn't Enough Anymore

Five years ago, an enterprise SaaS vendor could rely on longevity and deep domain expertise to hold market share. Today, customer expectations have shifted completely.

They no longer accept rigid software that forces every company to adopt it the same way. With today's tools, enterprise software should feel almost homegrown. It should fit each customer's specific challenges and respond fast, while it keeps enterprise scalability and security. We create the most value when customers join the innovation process and we solve their problems together.

AI drives this shift. What vendors can build today has raised what buyers expect from a partnership. Our development speed lets us answer customer requests in ways that were impossible a few years ago. The skill lies in balance: we serve a large customer base, yet every customer should feel the experience fits their business. Timing matters just as much. When customers help shape new ideas, innovation never surprises them, because they built it with us. That is what partnership means to MARKT-PILOT: a balanced relationship in which both sides grow and solve problems together.

Disrupt Yourself Before Someone Else Does

Every leadership team eventually faces a critical crossroads: defend a legacy business model, or dismantle it and lead the next category evolution.

When AI and adjacent platforms began to reshape the pricing landscape, we chose to lead. We did not wait for external pressure to set the terms. We expanded beyond point solutions and created a new category across the pricing lifecycle. With MP ONE™, pricing moves beyond changing prices to Pricing Performance.

You have to operate on the assumption that disruption is hiding right around the corner. Critically evaluate your own business and ask: If we were to disrupt ourselves, where would we do it?

Co-CEO, MARKT-PILOT Stephen Fauth

MARKT-PILOT read the signals early. A new alternative came nowhere near MARKT-PILOT's quality, but it cost a fraction as much and progressed fast. The leadership team projected how quickly that capability would accelerate. They also saw how disruption would hit the adjacent technologies around pricing, which opened a chance to leapfrog legacy providers.

A transformation of this scale asks a lot of any organization, and it succeeds only with the team behind it. Stephen's advice for other leaders: assess your business honestly, act on what you find, and bring your organization along. Done this way, the hard path also becomes a rewarding one.

The Operational Power of the Co-CEO Model

Co-CEO structures remain rare in enterprise software. For us, the model gives a clear advantage when speed matters. Creating a category reshapes an organization from the inside, from team structures to revenue recognition and financial models.

MARKT-PILOT split leadership responsibilities cleanly. Dr. Martin Ruth leads the foundation: operations, finance, and people. Stephen Fauth leads everything that touches the customer: go-to-market, product strategy, marketing, sales, customer success, and product engineering. Neither leader becomes a bottleneck, and both focus where they create the most impact.

The model grew naturally. When MARKT-PILOT moved beyond its founder-led phase, the plan included hiring a new CEO. In the meantime, Stephen Fauth as CRO and Dr. Martin Ruth as CFO led the company together for about a year to a year and a half. The setup worked, and the board backed it. That vote of confidence lets us keep our momentum and stay focused on our customers.

From Customer Idea to Working Prototype Overnight

In June, MARKT-PILOT hosted its PARTS FORUM in Chicago, a community event. Before the event, the customer advisory council met. The customer advisory council is a small group of selected customers we meet every quarter, virtually and in person. Together with our Co-CEOs, product, pricing, and aftermarket leaders, we share strategic feedback, discuss industry challenges, and shape the product direction.

During that session, one customer raised an idea. MARKT-PILOT has collected competitive pricing intelligence for the OEM aftermarket for six years. The customer asked why we had not turned that data into an index. Such an index would track how prices for a part category, like bearings or filters, performed over time. Customers could also compare prices by application or region. As the customer put it, nobody else in the world holds that data.

That evening, Dr. Martin Ruth called Stephen with what the leadership team calls “Big Dumb Idea”. In these sessions, leaders assume no constraints and share any idea without ridicule. Then they work out how to deliver it. Dr. Martin Ruth's idea: ask Daniel, our CPTO in Sweden, to build a working prototype overnight. Stephen called Daniel around seven in the evening. By the next morning, Daniel had a working prototype close to the final concept.

During a break at PARTS FORUM, they showed it to the advisory council. The room could hardly believe the speed and depth. The final feature went GA about 60 days later, and customers already use it. Our Co-CEO credits the advisory council for much of that progress. He says he does not know where MARKT-PILOT would stand today without that depth of customer engagement.

Listen to the Full Episode

The full conversation also covers Stephen’s hiring philosophy, why he recommends a third party to run advisory councils, and why he reads every morning to stay close to the OEM aftermarket. Listen to the full podcast episode on the Profitable Ideas Exchange Website or on Apple Podcasts.