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I whiled away a pleasant hour and more the other day with Peter McHugh, founder and CEO of Taunton-based performance management SaaS firm, Covalent. What a great story of yet another ‘Little British Battler’ taking the battle beyond our fair shores.
Currently the vast majority of Covalent’s £2m turnover derives from the UK public sector (a triumph in itself for such a tiny player). McHugh now wants to expand into private sector enterprises and into foreign markets. They already have a sales office in the US and earlier this year Covalent appointed a reseller in Mexico and, last month, in Nigeria (!) and Romania. McHugh also hopes to bring on board a partner in – yes, you guessed it – Brazil. France, Germany and Denmark are the next pins on the map.
Covalent now has some 45 employees, and supports over 25k users across nearly 200 customers. McHugh has achieved all of this with no basically external funding. His expansion plans are ambitious and I would think McHugh will have to strike a fine balance between growth and profit if he wants to continue to finance the business from its cash flow. But I wouldn’t be surprised if there weren’t a few investors out there that might take great interest in Covalent should McHugh decide to look outside for funding!
