Why I Sold – Acquisition Stories with Kylie Harker, SQiBLE

We caught up with Kylie Harker, the co-founder of SQiBLE, and current CEO of SQiBLE. To talk about the acquisition process for the Australian company and what life looks like post-acquisition.

Watch Kylie's Acquisition Story

SQiBLE Origin Story

I’m Kylie Harker. I am the CEO at SQiBLE. We are new to the Jonas family from about April 2025.

SQiBLE’s origin story is that we are a merge of two companies actually. One that I founded that was a CRM software based platform with a bunch of sales tools that added onto it. The name of that one was Squirrel. The other founder was Ty Osborne from Brainstorm IT. His company did ERP and adjacent software for the supply chain.

We were introduced by Catalyst Advisory, who we were both independently working with to help scale our businesses. We were introduced with the idea that we could do greater things together rather than separately. Longer term there was the idea that we would be acquired at some point which certainly happened faster than we had anticipated.

SQiBLE's Acquisition

How Did You Discover Jonas?

We discovered Jonas via Catalyst Advisory. The board that we were working with when we started talking about the future around acquisition, introduced us to the concept of Jonas.

Why Did You Decide to Sell to Jonas?

We decided to sell to Jonas primarily because of the autonomy they promised us. As a founder you know, it’s your baby, that business that you’ve grown. It’s a tricky transition to move from being your own boss and being in charge of all the decisions that you’re making, to another person’s employee. So the promise of that continutity was certainly very much of interest to both Ty and I.

Autonomy: ABCs Spotlight Part 1

Also, the idea of maintaining the team that we had and not feeling like we would be acquired and split up and told what to do, as you hear with some venture capitalist stories. That was certainly another reason.

We also liked the buy and hold philosophy that Jonas has, it really appealed to us. Again, just for continuity for the idea that Ty and I thought bringing our businesses together to form SQiBLE was about enabling greater things. So to be able to see that vision out was quite important to both of us.

I think on reflection, depending on where you are in your career and the stage of life that you’re in, being able to get my business to where I thought I could get it, had a great sense of legacy.

Perhaps for Ty, who is a little bit younger than me, it was about looking at where could he actually take his career to.

There’s obviously much bigger opportunities in a larger business and that was also really important to both of us in terms of what we could offer our team. When you’re a small business, there’s only so far that you can take your team and this felt like there was gonna be a lot greater opportunities within a bigger business.

During the selling process we did have another suiter. What was different about Jonas was their communication was very consistent throughout the process. The timelines did move a little bit, but that was communicated, the reasons why, et cetera. It just drove confidence that they knew what they were doing, that they cared about us and our decision making as well. That was certainly part of the reasoning behind selling to Jonas.

Watch The Acquisition Story Below

How Have You Seen Our Core Values (The Jonas ABC’s – Autonomy, Buy & Hold Forever & Culture of Sharing Best Practices) In Action

I’ve seen the core values in action in terms of what we were told during due diligence has actually been the case. We’ve definitely been quite autonomous in terms of day-to-day decision making. We’ve certainly been guided with Jonas’s best practices, and that was part of the reason for kind of jumping on board in the first place.

Culture of Sharing Best Practices: ABCs Spotlight Part 3

The communication with us, before we were purchased, during due diligence and post-acquisition, has been really consistent. During due diligence we met with some companies that were already part of Jonas and had just been recently been acquired. We were introduced to them to talk to and get their experience, which was really important. It helped answer a bunch of questions that you don’t feel like you can ask the powers that be. Then that same communication has happened since then. The other business unit leaders are very supportive. You can reach out to anybody and they will definitely try and help you.

I know personally, I’ve found that some of the monthly and quarterly reporting requirements are fairly intense and a little bit onerous, but there’s been a lot of support and learning around that.

One other thing that I think was really valuable to me, was within a couple of months of being acquired I got to go to JSA. Which was a conference for the senior leaders that kind of gave me a bit of a bootcamp on all of the Jonas best practices and ratios. And I also was lucky enough to go to Canada to the Jonas GROWs Conference, which, again, felt like a bootcamp showed the real breadth and power of being a part of a much larger organization.

What’s Been You Experience Been Post-Acquisition?

My experience post-acquisition has been that it’s quite organized. They’ve obviously done this one or two times. It’s still been quite a lot of work. We were a newly merged company so we were still trying to sort out our own IT systems and bringing those together and then having to integrate with Jonas was a lot of work. They definitely have got steps and the people to support you to do that. I’m glad to see the back of it though. It does take a little bit longer than perhaps you first anticipate.

The other reflection I would have of post-acquisition, is that I was trepidatious of having a boss. I hadn’t had a boss for 15+ years. But it’s been really great, Steve Hoy is my group leader. He’s patient and very smart. He’s been a really good backup for questions and anything that I’ve needed around best practices and trying to gently bring me on board to all the spreadsheets.

What Advice Would Give To Business Owners Looking to Sell Their Business?

I think the advice that I would give owners looking to sell their business is to get your back of house in order. Make sure that you’ve got your processes, your standard operating procedures, get all of those ducks in a row. I think as small business owners, we tend to not pay attention to the details in finance and all of that kind of stuff.

I would get all of that a hundred percent in order. It will make the transition far more easy just from an integration perspective into Jonas, but also just for your own headspace to not be having to worry about all of that stuff day to day. To just be able to easily package up and just hand it over to to Jonas.