Steven Forth is a partner at the AI company valueIQ.ai He was the co-founder of Ibbaka, the value, packaging, and pricing advisory firm serving B2B SaaS and agentic AI businesses, where he served as CEO. His work sits at the intersection of innovation, value and pricing. HIs toolkit includes value modeling and analysis, design thinking, concept blending, scenario planning and genetic and parametric design.
Steven's career spans four decades and two continents. He started his first company in Tokyo in the 1980s, working in design and software localization, then built a media and software localization business in Vancouver that spun out several software companies. He founded Recombo in 2001, joined Monitor Group in 2006 to lead the development of its online strategy tools. In 2009 led the spin out LeveragePoint Innovations, the pioneering B2B value-based pricing platform, serving as its founding CEO. He returned to Vancouver in 2012 and co-founded TeamFit, which became Ibbaka.
Steven has designed and reviewed dozens of credit-based pricing models for AI and SaaS companies and, with Michael Mansard, co-developed the COMPASS framework for pricing agentic AI. He was named one of the top pricing thought leaders in the world by OpenView Venture Partners. He is a frequent speaker and podcast guest on pricing strategy, generative pricing, and the agent economy, and an active angel investor.
He lives in Kitsilano, Vancouver, with his wife, the artist Yoshie Hattori. He reads and translates classical Japanese poetry, cooks, cycles, and is happiest with several books on the go.
Key publications
Pricing Innovation (Substack newsletter on credit-based pricing and the agent economy) — pricinginnovation.substack.com
Ibbaka Value & Pricing Blog (several hundred essays on value-based pricing for B2B SaaS and AI) — ibbaka.com/ibbaka-market-blog
"Value Pricing and Billing in the Agent Economy" (Ibbaka research report, 2025)
"Will User-Based or Credit-Based Pricing Prevail in the AI Era?" (Professional Pricing Society, 2026)
"Credit Based Pricing Foundations" (LinkedIn, 2026)
The COMPASS Framework for pricing agentic AI (with Michael Mansard, 2026)
Forthcoming: Scenario Planning for Pricing in the Agent Economy; Value Attribution (with Michael Mansard)