Can IT Services Exit? : Building a Structured Path to a Successful Exit

IT service companies are an excellent path to starting entrepreneurship but founders often struggle to see an exit. This leads to either them becoming less aggressive in growth or sends them on an arduous journey to pivot to a product company.

The former destroys the equity value in the business and the latter risks the business by taking away its leadership mindshare, engineering resources, and cash – and, unfortunately, nearly all of these pivots fail.

This panel discussion gave current or aspiring IT services founders insight into the path to building equity value in service businesses and exiting them for life-changing financial outcomes.

It brought together experts from the USA that have built and successfully sold services businesses:

🔵 Darin Cook (ex-CEO, SynchroNet): An AWS consulting partner who exited to Software One in 2022.

🔵 Steve K. Lee (Managing Director, Layer7 Capital): Part of numerous international investment & acquisition transactions, all in the IT services sector.

🔵 Aater Suleman (ex-CEO, Flux7): An IT services company exited to NTT Data Services in 2020.

This panel was moderated by P@SHA CEC Member Jamil Goheer (CEO, Kualitatem) who is also a founder running a services & product company under one roof.

This panel will be followed by a workshop in March to educate selected services founders on how to develop a Unique Value Proposition and followed by a sales pitch competition where services founders will present their pitches and the best pitch will win PKR 250,000.