Overview of Practical Founders Episode #194: Why Selling Your Company Can Be a Growth Strategy - Sharon Nouh
In this episode of Practical Founders, Greg Head talks with Sharon Nouh, founder of ProSpend, about building a bootstrapped spend-management software company in Australia, growing it over 10 years to around 1,000 customers and 50 employees, and ultimately selling it to Invincible Software Holdings. The core theme is that selling a company is not always an endgame or a sign of burnout—it can also be a deliberate growth strategy to unlock a bigger vision, such as entering a new market like the UK. Sharon shares how she built ProSpend from a real operational pain point, grew through partnerships and reseller channels, stayed capital-efficient, and made an acquisition decision that aligned with both her personal goals and the company’s next phase.
What ProSpend Does
ProSpend is a spend management platform for mid-market companies, focused on automating and digitizing business spend across multiple workflows:
- Expense management
- Accounts payable automation
- Purchase orders
- Travel spend
- Budget controls and approvals
The platform is designed to help CFOs and finance teams gain real-time visibility, enforce policies, reduce fraud risk, and push clean data into ERP/finance systems.
Why It Matters
Sharon’s point is that many mid-sized businesses still manage spending with manual, fragmented processes. ProSpend replaces paper receipts, handwritten approvals, re-keying invoices, and disconnected systems with a single controlled workflow.
Sharon Nouh’s Founder Story
Sharon came to the business from the travel industry, where she owned corporate travel agencies. That background exposed her to the chaos of expense reporting and invoice processing:
- Credit card statements were paper-based
- Employees wrote notes on statements by hand
- Approvals moved physically between people
- Finance teams had to re-enter data manually
She saw a clear opportunity to digitize the whole process and built the first product herself, launching the company in 2016.
First Customer Proof Point
Her first beta customer was Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC), which gave her early credibility and validated that a “one-woman band” could sell enterprise-grade value if the pain point was strong enough.
Growth Strategy and Go-to-Market
Sharon deliberately avoided trying to serve everyone. Instead, she focused on the Australian and New Zealand mid-market, which she saw as the best fit for product-market pain and willingness to pay.
Why Mid-Market?
- Too small for large enterprise systems to be necessary
- Too complex for SMB-style lightweight tools
- Large enough to justify automation and controls
- A strong regional market with many potential customers
Channel Strategy
One of the most important growth levers was partnering with MYOB, the dominant accounting platform in the Australian mid-market.
Sharon described several tactics that helped ProSpend scale:
- API integration with MYOB
- Reseller partnerships
- Attendance at channel events
- Co-marketing
- Referrals from CFOs and finance leaders
- Early cold calling before the channel matured
She noted that about 50% of new customers now come through the reseller channel, and 10–15% come from referrals.
Bootstrapping, Cashflow, and Funding Choices
ProSpend was bootstrapped for most of its life, which meant cashflow was always tight in the early years.
Challenges of Bootstrapping
- Hiring the first support person created real financial pressure
- Sharon did not pay herself for about five to six years
- Growth was slower without a large capital base
She explored venture funding, but investors in Australia were hesitant. Sharon also felt that VC would have meant giving up both equity and control, including the ability to choose when to sell.
Alternative Capital
Instead of VC, she used debt financing from Lighter Capital in multiple tranches to fund predictable growth initiatives such as:
- Marketing
- Headcount
- Development resources
Her approach was to borrow only when she had a clear line of sight to revenue growth and repayment.
Selling the Company as a Growth Strategy
The biggest strategic insight in the episode is that Sharon did not sell ProSpend because she was done. She sold because she wanted to expand into the UK and believed acquisition was the best path to do it.
Why the UK?
- Similar mid-market customer profile to Australia
- Strong fit for ProSpend’s product
- An incumbent competitor, WebExpenses, had become weak after multiple ownership changes
- She saw a real market gap
Why Sell Instead of Raise VC?
Sharon considered funding, but chose partnership and acquisition instead because she wanted:
- More than just money
- Boots-on-the-ground market knowledge
- A partner with local UK experience
- A path that preserved strategic control
Why Invincible Software Holdings?
ISH was a strong fit because of its connection to the spend management space, including people who had worked with WebExpenses. Sharon said the deal worked because:
- The buyer understood the market deeply
- The founder-to-founder negotiation had mutual respect
- Both sides were reasonable and commercially sharp
- The terms were set upfront, including the valuation multiple and limited earn-out
She emphasized that the company was still growing when she sold, which gave her leverage in the negotiation.
AI, the Future, and Founder Advice
Sharon sees AI as an accelerator, not a replacement, for a real software business. She said ProSpend is already using AI to speed up coding and improve workflows, but finance customers remain cautious about letting AI make autonomous payment decisions.
Her Advice to Bootstrapped Founders
- Be realistic: it’s not an overnight journey
- Expect the build to take at least 10 years
- Focus on solving a real pain point
- Stay disciplined about capital
- Build something durable before chasing scale
- Don’t underestimate the value of timing when considering an exit
Key Takeaways
- A company sale can be a strategic growth move, not just an exit.
- Narrow focus on a real mid-market pain point can create a strong business.
- Reseller partnerships can be a powerful growth engine in ERP/accounting ecosystems.
- Bootstrapping forces discipline and can protect founders from bad dilution or loss of control.
- Founders who understand their leverage can negotiate better exits.
- Product-led conviction and customer trust matter more than hype in regulated, workflow-heavy software categories.