Cloud Ratings Appoints John E. Lepto IV as Chief Business Officer to Accelerate Commercial Expansion

SAN DIEGO, Jan. 8, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Cloud Ratings, a growing data-driven software analyst firm, announced the appointment of John E. Lepto IV as Chief Business Officer (CBO), effective immediately. Lepto will lead the company’s commercial strategy and expand its data-led private equity due diligence practice.

He brings more than 15 years of experience leading commercial teams and value-creation initiatives across SaaS, analytics, and PE-backed businesses, including Experity, OSG Analytics, and Outcome Health.

Lepto’s operating executive roles complement his Sales and Commercial Excellence Operating Partner role at Crown Capital, a lower-middle-market PE firm.

His career includes sales leadership roles at Experity, a Warburg Pincus-backed healthcare IT company, where he helped navigate a major consolidation of the industry’s two largest competitors and an exit to GTCR.

He later served as Managing Director of Growth within the PE business unit of E78, a Further Global-backed Office of the CFO consulting firm. Most recently, Lepto served as Chief Revenue Officer for Clear Go-To-Market, a win/loss analysis specialist for PE-backed B2B SaaS organizations.

“Deeply understanding how software is bought and sold is a key theme of Cloud Ratings’ research approach. John Lepto’s background as a software sales leader and private equity GTM operating partner will complement and enhance our quantitative Alto Model insights,” commented Matt Harney, Founder of Cloud Ratings.  

John Lepto and Cloud Ratings’ engagements with private equity investment firms will leverage the Cloud Ratings’ Alto Model.

The Alto Model heritage reflects Founder Matt Harney’s 16 years of software investing experience across public markets and private equity, including co-leading the successful acquisitions and exits of IRTH Solutions (now owned by TPG Capital) and Samba Safety (now owned by Stone Point Capital).  

The Alto Model combines a wide range of scaled data sources with a nuanced understanding of software buyer/seller behaviors to create bespoke, forward-looking quantitative models.

The Alto Model was first publicly previewed with a Zendesk buyout case study at Cloud Ratings’ “Value Creation Summit 2025” (Event Recap | Slides | Videos) hosted in partnership with G2, People Data Labs, and Fullcast.

Alto complements Cloud Ratings Quadrants coverage – enhanced by a strategic partnership with G2 – and a growing True ROI practice area. In addition to traditional 3rd-party analyst ROI reports (as an alternative to services like Forrester’s Total Economic Impact), the True ROI practice area supports bespoke value-engineering engagements, serving as an arbiter between software buyers and vendors for high-stakes technology decisions. For example, Cloud Ratings True ROI is currently assisting a VC-backed AI vendor in multiple negotiations, each exceeding $10 million in Total Contract Value.      

About Cloud Ratings:

Cloud Ratings is a data-driven software analyst firm.

Built upon investigative customer interviews, our True ROI Reports quantify and provide 3rd-party validation of a software product’s business value.

Our Cloud Ratings Quadrant research methodology combines user reviews, enhanced by a strategic partnership with G2, with verified vendor data to impartially identify leading software products.

Our proprietary Alto Model combines a wide range of scaled data sources with a nuanced understanding of software buyer/seller behaviors to create bespoke, forward-looking quantitative models.

Our platform includes our “SaaSletter” newsletter and two podcasts: “Cloud Radio” for operators and “Cloud Returns” for investors.

cloudratings.com

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SOURCE Cloud Ratings