#143: From Professional Services to a $30M SaaS Business with a PE Acquisition - Sean Hoban
Episode description
Sean Hoban was co-founder and former CEO of Kimble Applications, a leading professional services automation (PSA) software for organizations to manage their professional services business's entire operational and financial lifecycle. Sean and his co-founders had already started, grown, and sold a pro services organization before creating a PSA product and building a SaaS business.
With a little funding from the founders and a few angel investors, Kimble started efficiently and grew steadily, eventually raising a practical minority funding round from private equity investors Accel-KKR in 2018. The company grew to $30M ARR before selling most of the company to Accel-KKR in 2021, which merged two PSA companies to create Kontata.
In this episode, Sean discusses some of their deepest strategic opportunities:
- Learning to grow a SaaS business versus a professional services organization
- Building on the Salesforce platform and working in that ecosystem
- Starting in the UK and expanding to Germany and the US
Quote from Sean Hoban, former CEO and co-founder of Kimble Applications
“One of the most powerful ways I learned as a CEO is to find and talk to other founders in London who were in a similar situation. We would meet for beers, share ideas, and chat on WhatsApp.
“If you have a specific problem, it was valuable to talk to other founders in the same growth stage. And these were founders, not hired CEOs.
“It's a lonely job as a CEO. And being able to talk to somebody else who is in a similar position can be cathartic and very helpful.”
Links
- Sean Hoban on LinkedIn
- Kantata on LinkedIn
- Kantata SX (formerly Kimble Applications) website
- Accel-KKR website
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