When Real Deals Media’s new CEO, Jonathon Whiteley, called Substribe for help, he knew what to expect.

‘I’ve worked with Andy across three businesses.

The value of his discovery sprints, market positioning, and conclusions consistently turn customer conversations and analytical signals into strategic clarity.

His work is backed by user evidence and real-world conclusions, to support a step change in product development and GTM strategy.

That’s why I keep bringing him back for expert judgement, rigorous reasoning, and results we can act on with confidence.’

Jonathon Whiteley

This is the latest chapter in a relationship that goes back to the earlies days of Substribe’s journey. Jonathon was part of the small advisory board for the Substribe Summit, helping to shape the agenda for subscription leaders.

He has brought Andy Burden from Substribe in at every company he’s led: Computing at Incisive Media, the Farmers Guardian ‘Farm Futures’ reboot at Arc, and now two brands at Real Deals Media: Real Deals subscriptions, and, The Drawdown’s high value network proposition, ‘Operational Leaders Summit.’

For these 2 brands, the cross functional teams were brought together to surface ideas and challenges and rethink their strategy. Ideas were tested in market, to discover gaps in value – what the product already did well, what it needed next, and how to sell it to corporate buyers.

The breakthrough didn’t come from taking subscriber feedback at face value. Discovery conversations surfaced the kind of data the audience needs and why, informing the journalists and data teams to make a relatively small but focused iteration to the way they work. From there, they’ve build an index of deal-sourcing activity their subscribers value.

The bigger change came from turning the insights from deep conversations with the audience, into a new value proposition. This had to do two jobs at once – give the market a reason to buy, and give the internal team a clear purpose to align around.

Substribe created  Source, Connect, Win – the three-pillar framework that now defines how Real Deals Media serves the European private equity and mid-market transaction community:

• Source – market intelligence and data: exclusive mid-market deal and fundraising data, plus trend analysis that helps firms benchmark and spot emerging risk ahead of the wider market.
• Connect – the networking ecosystem: flagship events including the Value Creation Summit, PE Live and the Private Equity Awards, bringing LPs, GPs and advisors into direct contact.
• Win – value creation and execution: turning that data and those relationships into the insight deal teams need to close transactions and grow portfolio value.

Results

Real Deals Media, the European private equity intelligence publisher behind Real Deals and The Drawdown was shortlisted for Digital Publisher of the Year and Best Digital Product at the PPA Awards 2026, and Highly Commended for Product & Digital Team at the AOP Digital Publishing Awards 2026.

Substribe runs customer and pricing discovery sprints for B2B information and media businesses.

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Related reading: AgriConnect: Long Term Impact Of Customer Discovery · Computing (Delta): testing a new product at Incisive Media · One leader, three companies: why the same person keeps calling Substribe back in