How did savvy founders learn and master the new SaaS game when it was not well understood 15 years ago? When there weren’t endless books, blogs, LinkedIn posts, and videos showing proven techniques, models, and frameworks.
Everyone was still figuring out the basics of the SaaS model, cloud technology, and the details of a recurring revenue business.
We all did the same thing back then:
We hung out with other serious founders and shared our problems and what we had learned with each other.
Sean Hoban was co-founder and former CEO of Kimble Applications (now Kantata), a leading provider of professional services automation (PSA) software that helps professional services businesses manage their 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 Kantata.
Sean understood the pro services business model very well, but learning the new game of SaaS products from startup to scale was a different sport.
As Sean described it on my podcast:
“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.”
Yes, there is plenty of great SaaS CONTENT out there now.
But the important stuff is the CONTEXT— which specific variations will work best for our business, at our stage, with our founders, in our market this year.
In this episode, Sean also discusses some of their biggest strategic opportunities at Kimble:
– 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
Check out this amazing interview with Sean Hoban on the Practical Founders Podcast.
