by How a Substribe discovery sprint created the blueprint for a recurring revenue model
Triple Revenue. Quadruple EBITDA. Moved to a flagship buyout fund.
PEI has a long history of relationships with the people who run private equity, private credit, infrastructure and real estate capital. Editorial credibility across every major asset class. A community of investment professionals who trust the brand.
A few years back, what it didn’t have was a clear answer to a question that lockdown made urgent: what does this business look like when the events stop?
That’s where Substribe came in.
Based on 15 years practitioner experience at Procurement Leaders, Substribe made the case to the board. PEI’s leadership needed to understand what a good peer network looks like, the size of the prize, and if the model could be repeated across their communities. This became the brief for the sprint. The two audience groups in scope were the Operating Partner and the CFO network.
Following in depth conversations to define value, we tested the concept in both networks. Substribe provided the customer evidence and the commercial blueprint to replicate the approach.
‘Substribe helped our US and UK teams define a number of strategic opportunities for the business…brought the team and our customers together… and test a prototype within a matter of days…They’ve enabled us to move much more quickly and to increase our confidence.’ Paul McLean, CCO.
The milestones since then include:
December 2023, Bridgepoint moved PEI Group from its development capital fund into Bridgepoint Europe VII, its flagship buyout fund. The announcement confirmed the business had tripled its revenue and quadrupled its EBITDA over five years. That kind of fund transition has a specific meaning: it signals that the revenue has become predictable enough, and scalable enough, to justify a different class of institutional capital.
March 2024, PEI hired a new senior leadership role to lead the continued scaling of the membership model and its events portfolio.
May 2026, PEI launched its next-generation infrastructure platform, merging news, data, analysis, networking and events into a single membership experience.
Substribe didn’t build it, but answered the question that should come first. Is there a product here, is it one your customers will pay for, and how is the model repeated?
Substribe runs customer and pricing discovery sprints for B2B information and data businesses.
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