Practical Founders Podcast

#143: From Professional Services to a $30M SaaS Business with a PE Acquisition – Sean Hoban

May 8, 2025

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

Podcast Sponsor – Cypress Growth Capital

This podcast is sponsored by Cypress Growth Capital, an alternative to equity, royalty-based growth capital provides funding in exchange for a fixed percentage of your company’s future monthly revenues. Learn more at https://www.cypressgrowthcapital.com/

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Practical Founders Podcast with Greg Head

Every week, host Greg Head interviews a successful software founder who started, grew, and sometimes sold a valuable software company—without big funding.

Over $8 billion of founder equity value has been created by just 130 SaaS founders interviewed on this podcast so far. That’s an average of $60 million founder of equity value created by each company.

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