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

37 snips

May 9, 2025

Sean Hoban, co-founder and former CEO of Kimble Applications, shares his journey from professional services to building a $30M SaaS business. He discusses the strategic shift needed to grow in the SaaS market and his experience using the Salesforce ecosystem. Sean also dives into challenges like customer onboarding and navigating funding dynamics, including insights on the EIS scheme for angel investors. He emphasizes the importance of engaging with ideal customer profiles and the impact of private equity on transitioning to a successful SaaS model.

Ask episode

AI Snips

Chapters

Transcript

Episode notes

ANECDOTE

Kimble as PSA ERP Solution

Kimble Applications built PSA software managing the entire operational lifecycle in professional services.
It acts as an ERP for services connecting CRM to ledgers for financial and operational management.

INSIGHT

Forward Looking Management Essential

Managing professional services must be forward-looking, not backward.
Using the sales pipeline for forecasting revenue, costs, and utilization drives better business management.

ANECDOTE

PSA Needs Beyond IT Services

Kimble initially targeted IT services but discovered diverse verticals needed PSA, including clinical research and tech firms.
Many product companies also require services resource management for delivery and revenue recognition.

Get the Snipd Podcast app to discover more snips from this episode

Get the app

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

The Practical Founders Podcast

Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies without big funding. Subscribe to the Practical Founders Podcast using your favorite podcast app or view on our YouTube channel.

Get the weekly Practical Founders newsletter and podcast updates at practicalfounders.com.