In this episode of Behind the Deal, Thoma Bravo Partner Ross Devor sits down with John McGowan of HubSync.
AIR DATE:
July 17, 2025
LENGTH:
28:08
Transcript
DISCLAIMER:
This podcast is for informational purposes only and does not constitute an advertisement. Views expressed are those of the individuals and not necessarily the views of Thoma Bravo or its affiliates. Thoma Bravo funds generally hold interest in the companies discussed. This podcast should not be construed as an offer to solicit the purchase of any interest of any Thoma Bravo fund.
A.J. Rohde:
Welcome to the final episode of the third season of Thoma Bravo’s ‘Behind the Deal.’ I’m A.J. Rohde, Senior Partner at Thoma Bravo. And that was HubSync Founder and CEO John McGowan speaking with Thoma Bravo Partner Ross Devor.
HubSync is a leader in tax and accounting automation and client experience. Since its founding in 2019, HubSync has grown remarkably, with over 100% growth just last year, all while maintaining bootstrap profitability. Today, HubSync collaborates with some of the largest CPA firms in the U.S., including over 40% of the top 25 accounting firms.
In May 2025, Thoma Bravo announced a strategic growth investment of over $100 million in HubSync. The standout aspect of this deal is the visionary leadership of John McGowan. We were thrilled to partner with John, whose innovative background with deep industry expertise make him an exceptional leader.
So today, we’ll uncover everything that went on ‘Behind the Deal’ with a conversation featuring Thoma Bravo Partner Ross Devor and the CEO and Founder of HubSync, John McGowan.
MUSIC IN
Ross Devor:
Hi, I'm Ross Devor, partner here at Thoma Bravo and head of our growth fund, which is our fund dedicated to partnering with growth stage and earlier stage companies on their path to success and working with our operating resources to help them reach new heights.
HubSync is a leader in tax and accounting automation and client experience software. They empower accounting firms and tax professionals with their innovative platform that drives efficiency, accuracy, and enhanced workflows for their clients. They allow tax professionals and their firms to engage much more seamlessly in an automated fashion with their clients and draw the data which is so critical to preparing tax filings in a much more seamless and automated fashion, ultimately filing that tax return and providing transparency, accountability, and compliance for firms along that process, and at the same time, providing much better client experience for their customers.
Today, more than 85% of top CPA firms rely on five or more software point solutions to manage that workflow. And the differentiator for HubSync is building all of that functionality into one modern and automated platform. And it allows the CPA firms who use it to drive transformational ROI and superior customer satisfaction.
Thoma Bravo first learned of HubSync as we were doing work investigating the accounting landscape. And the accounting landscape is really interesting from a digital technology adoption standpoint because it's been so far behind the curve of adopting technology and tools to further the productivity and client experience in the space. And HubSync really stood out as we looked at all of the tools that are starting to be used by CPAs and by accounting firms because it had really built something that was modern and comprehensive in nature. And not only did the technology get us excited, but the person who founded it and is leading it, John McGowan, had such a unique background with relevant experience at some of largest accounting firms and really understanding this problem.
So Thoma Bravo announced a very large strategic investment in HubSync in May of 2025. And we're really excited about this investment for a couple of reasons. You know, one, I talked about the backdrop and how ripe of an opportunity, you know, more digital adoption and more technology adoption around the corner for accounting firms and CPAs. But HubSync in this landscape of accounting tools and technology, which is really emerging, stood out for us. Number one, because they've built something that is driving really strong ROI and provides a comprehensive suite of solutions to the practitioners to drive automation and workflow. But second, it's a chance to partner with John. And John is a really unique individual in this space given he's lived and breathed this problem set and this experience as a practitioner and some of the largest accounting firms, and he not only has a great product roadmap which gets us really really excited, but he's really thoughtful about pragmatic and efficient growth and he has built a really great innovation engine at the company that then we think of as a great opportunity to help provide some operational resources and investment behind building a great business behind all that innovation and great product that John is out serving customers with.
In some ways this deal is very down the fairway for Thoma Bravo. We love to partner with great founders and existing management teams and bring resources and capital behind great products. But I think what might be unique in this deal compared to some of the other deals at Thoma Bravo, was the fact that we're really bringing the platform and our significant capital resources to a company that is still in its very early growth stages and very early innovation stages. And that's exciting because folks might not know that Thoma Bravo can be such a great partner to such companies that are, you know, early in their life cycle, growing rapidly. And it takes a CEO and a founder like John to really lean into everything that Thoma Bravo can bring and all the operational history and experience in our portfolio and look to drive a great partnership. So, the exceptional part for us is really that we get such a partnership with a seasoned executive like John at such a young and innovative company.
MUSIC TRANSITION
In my point of view, what's really unique about working with founders is that they have such a unique sense for the problem that they're trying to solve. Founders usually are coming from, and in John's case, it's no different, from living a problem firsthand. And that's always really, really informative to how you build a great product and how you drive customer satisfaction. So, the benefit of working with a founder is that you're that much closer to really bringing innovative solutions and changing the game from a technology perspective for customer satisfaction, you know, regardless of the vertical that they're serving. And John's a great example of that. He knew firsthand the pain that CPA’s and the practitioners at those firms were living with and saw the first hand pain that clients of those CPA firms had as well in terms of how to create a seamless workflow that drove efficiency, accountability, and compliance for CPAs and their customers.
MUSIC
Up next, my conversation with John McGowan
Ross Devor:
John, good to see you. How are you doing today?
John McGowan:
Great Ross, how are you doing?
Ross Devor:
I’m doing all right. I'm looking forward to this podcast. Thanks again for doing this. I'm excited to jump into your background and the HubSync story and our partnership today, which we're really excited about.
John McGowan:
I look forward to the dialogue. It's been an exciting partnership to start and looking forward to what's to come.
Ross Devor:
Tell me who you got in the background there to start things off.
John McGowan:
Well, I am a UNC fan as you know, I think our project was called Project Tar Heel.
Ross Devor:
That's right. That's right.
John McGowan:
So I've got MJ in the background with his UNC gear on and I've got a few others, I've got Ramsey's and a few other things here. Some Jordan's shoes in my background as you know, I'm a big UNC fan.
Ross Devor:
Love that. That's right. By default, I am too now, so go heels, go MJ.
John McGowan:
Exactly. Go Heels!
Ross Devor:
You're not only the CEO of HubSync, but you're the founder. So, given that backdrop, could you tell us a little bit about the problem that you saw and were living firsthand, and we're ultimately trying to solve with HubSync when you built it?
John McGowan:
Well, I told you the story when we first talked. I mean, I'm a typical founder that experienced this problem myself. So I actually started in tax as a tax staff person in Raleigh, North Carolina. And I saw these problems early on. Like, why am I hand punching data into the tax software? So I actually developed some technology as a staff person a long, long time ago, I won't date myself, that actually took my data from the clients and pushed it directly into the tax software. So my partners were like, “how are you getting these tax returns done so quickly?”
So that was kind of my first foray into, “wow there's a problem and there's an opportunity in this industry.” And then I moved into technology at KPMG and ultimately became the CIO of the tax practice there and really saw an opportunity to kind of aggregate both the firm experience and the client experience into one platform. Even at KPMG, we had 60 different applications with different look and feel with different architectures. So, I came in as a really business focused CIO and said, why don't we consolidate this into one architecture? One look and feel for our firm professionals, for our clients. And actually it really helped us build applications much more rapidly, having built this on a common platform. And we're seeing that now at HubSync as well. So really built the first version of HubSync inside of KPMG. Then I went to Deloitte and did the same thing. And really the realization for me Ross is I'd started to go out to conferences and people like, “why can't we get access to this type of technology?” And what I found was the firms right below the big four didn't have the resources. I had 500 developers at KPMG, and if you go right below the big four, you might have five or 10 developers. So they didn't really have the capability to build something like HubSync and they were quite frustrated with some of the legacy technology. We'll talk about this. Some of the point solutions that are in the industry. So I really brought HubSync out in mid 18 to the market, and we've been servicing the market with a great platform ever since. It's been an exciting story.
Ross Devor:
That's really awesome to hear that backdrop. And, sometimes when we're out making investments, it's hard to get up to speed on exactly what the problem or use case was. In this case, it's something that's so tangible, even to someone like me, right? We all live this ourselves and even I can tell you that one firm that does my taxes, who's not necessarily a client, it shocks me just how manual, you know, just how inefficient and kind of happenstance this process is. To collect information, understand what's been done, what's coming up next, and I'm sure in reverse from the practitioner side, to do that in some way that's automated and efficient, Ii's just a really big problem and one that was very clear to us right from the very first meeting what you were doing and how much better it was than the current process, which was exciting.
John McGowan:
Well, Ross, you mentioned when I was doing my pitch early on and raising some seed money, it was the easiest pitch in the world. I said, “what's your experience like with your CPA provider?”
Ross Devor:
Right. Exactly. Yeah.
John McGowan:
And I never really got very good answers on what people's experience was like. And even during the series B process, meeting with different investors, they would say what you said, Ross.They said, “I'm logging in, and I'm giving my data using this application. I'm getting my tax return from a different application and I'm paying my bill through another application. Like John, why don't you fix this and give us a single pane of glass here?”
Ross Devor:
Right, exactly. With minimal connectivity and communication in between. It's just an archaic process, which is really interesting. But, I want to touch on one thing, which is really important for you and what you're building around, is an integrated platform and one touching so many parts of that workflow from end to end. Why is that important and why is that a differentiator for you guys versus the landscape of what's out there?
John McGowan:
Well, let's start again with the client experience, right? There's, too many systems that the firm is requiring the taxpayer and audit clients to navigate to do business with them. So even inside the tax practice, we're seeing multiple different applications and portals. I was talking to an advisor to the industry. He's tracking 67 different portal solutions that are out in the market right now. So imagine being a buyer trying to navigate across all these different products and solutions. So, the client experience has been broken in my view for a long, long time. There's been a lot of great point solutions in the industry that solve different parts of that problem that I just described, delivering the tax return, maybe collecting data for an individual tax client, but no one's really tried to comprehensively solve it. And then you go to the audit side and they're typically using different tools. So if you're an audit client and a tax client of the firm, you're having to navigate across a lot of different products to interface with the firm. And there's still manual processes involved too. So we still hear about email and paper and other things that are being delivered.
Ross Devor:
Yeah, sure.
John McGowan:
So it's a really messy experience. So that's the client experience that we're fixing. And then as I mentioned earlier, the firm experience. I mean the people coming into this industry now, Ross, they're not going to do what I did. They don't want to do data wrangling. They don't want to be hand punching data into software. There's a talent shortage in this industry because people don't want to come into a CPA firm and be doing this type of manual work. I mean, they're used to their phone and a modern experience in their client, in their personal life. They don't want to go work and deal with paper and inputting manual data into tax software. So we're really trying to fix the experience for the firm professional as well. So they've got a single pane of glass. It's much, much easier and more efficient. We'll talk about AI in a minute, on how AI is helping with this problem as well. So that the average tax or audit professional is a lot more efficient and doing more value added services for their clients versus doing some of these mundane manual tasks that they've been doing in the past.
Ross Devor:
Really interesting. And why do you think that accounting firms in general have just been so slow to adopt technology? What is it about this space and the customers and the accounting firms themselves that have kind of held them back? And maybe why is that changing now?
John McGowan:
Well, we kind of joke around that we compete against the status quo. So there's a lot of people that have been in this industry for a long time. They don't like change. I saw this in the big four. We would go out and train people on new technology and all the staff people would get really, really excited. They'd go back to their office and the partner would say, well, no, this is the way I've done it for forever. You're going to use this Excel work paper that I had. So there's some of that change management. There's definitely a generational shift that's happening in industry between say partners who've been in the industry for a long time, maybe aren't as abrasive of sort of change in technology and digital transformation, and some of the younger staff who really want access to technology and want to be more efficient. So I'd say that's one thing.
The other thing is there's just a lot of change happening in the industry in general. We've got private equity investment into the industry. You've got firms that are switching a lot of systems. They’re moving ERP systems, they're moving CRM systems. And I think the leadership inside these firms is cognizant that the partners and the staff can only take on so much change. So we often hear “we really want to adopt all of HubSync, but we're going through this ERP switch or a CRM switch and we can only digest so much digital change, you know, inside of a six or 12 month period.” So I'd say there's a lot of shift and change happening in the industry. We'd like to move faster with some of these firms, but we have to be cognizant of the fact that there's a lot of technological change and a lot of these partners and staff people say, “look, we still have to serve our clients. We can only, you know, handle so much change inside a firm.” But that's something I think a lot of the firms are grappling with right now.
Ross Devor:
It's an interesting point on how the ownership of some of these firms is changing. And, you know, we invest in technology here, but I have friends at other private equity firms which are becoming more and more such a large owner of, you know, services and accounting firms in general. I can tell you at the top of all of their investment memos is the need for more technology and the ability to impact the business fundamentals in such a great way from starting from client experience. So it's a really unique backdrop for us to serve technology into that because it's such a priority for all of the new ownership across this landscape.
John McGowan:
Well, the private equity loves the firms because they're profitable, they're growing. Everybody always needs their taxes done. Everybody needs an audit done. Right? And that's part of the challenge with some of the change. You know, it's recession proof and a lot of the partners would look at some of the technology change like “look, I'm profitable. I'm keeping my clients. You know, why do I need to digitally transform and change?” So that's been some of the resistance as well. But I think the infusion of private equity investment into the industry is really just going to put gasoline on the fire because private equity really wants to see these firms transforming, getting more modern, adopting AI, how do you get the hybrid workforce or maybe sending tax returns to lower cost locations and things of that nature. So we really actually think the private equity movement into the industry is going to be really helpful to HubSync.
Ross Devor:
Yeah, definitely, definitely. And I want to double click on one part of your growth angle. You're on a lot of fast growth lists. We've all seen those lists out there. I'm glad you're on most, if not all, of them. But, the way you're growing is unique, because you're growing also in the top end of the enterprise, in the top end of the market. And so tell me a little bit about how you're able to win in that part of the market and why your growth in the enterprise is so successful.
John McGowan:
Yeah, I mean, I think the other story that I tell is the deputy CIO left KPMG and he went to a top 10 firm as the CIO and he called me up shortly thereafter and he knew what I was doing at KPMG and the tax technology group. And he said, you know, John, you've got 500 developers developing software. I've got five. And we're talking about handing thumb drives to clients to give them their tax returns. So, I mean, that was the opportunity that kind of presented itself. So I knew there was a product market fit for HubSync out of the gate. I know a lot of founders like, I have product market fit. I was very confident that what we were building inside the big four would be something that all these firms could use. But in terms of the growth, you know, we're really focused on customer centricity. It's all about the client and their clients. How do we make that experience better for the firm and their clients? So one of the things I think that's unique about us and really differentiates us from a lot of the traditional vendors in the industry is just how fast we move. We listen, we incorporate that feedback, we release frequently. So we release every two weeks. You know, the industry was really frustrated as I went into the industry and started consulting about the opportunity for HubSync. There was just a lot of frustration that we keep asking for future requests, the vendors just tell us no, or we only get two releases a year. So one of the things that really differentiates us is we listen, we respond, and a client might ask for a feature and actually see it in the next release. So the eyes light up. So we're really excited about the growth trajectory inside our client base.
I think we're super sticky as well. Once we get in with one module, these firms see the opportunity and there's more value as they adopt more modules inside the platform. So most of our clients typically might start with one or two, but they're always telling us, “look, we want to roll out the entire platform. We see the benefit of having a one platform strategy.” So, you know, that's really helped facilitate our growth, but really we're all about the client. If we know if we're helping and partnering with our clients, the money and the growth is going to come alongside it. But it's been very gratifying as a former Deloitte partner to be on that list and it's a great accomplishment for our team and for our clients.
Ross Devor:
Yeah, you know, it's not always the case when we're talking to customers and getting up to speed on the story outside in that you hear a company like HubSync mentioned as a thought partner and like John mentioned as a thought partner, which is something that we heard over and over again. That, “listen, the last thing we can afford is to mess up such a mission critical process,” right? This is literally how these companies make money, is this process of tax preparation returns, right? So this is heart surgery for them and your ability to be a thought partner on the roadmap to elevate their game and customer experience in automation, but also be a trusted kind of, you know, partner in the transformation itself really stood out. And that's an exceptionally difficult thing to do. To be able to to be trusted to rework someone's process with technology when it's so mission critical at the highest level of enterprise and practitioners that are out there.
John McGowan:
Well, we really thank you for that. We really pride ourselves on that. And some of the feedback we got during this process was phenomenal. I think one of the quotes that I loved was “the product's great, but we really love the people and how consultative they are and what a trusted partner they are.” Of course, I wanted them to talk about how much they love the platform too. But actually I found that compliment to be most gratifying because we really, we're not coming into a firm trying to sell features. We're coming in to solve business problems with our platform. That's what we enjoy doing. We have a team that has a background in this industry. So we really feel like when we walk into a building and start talking to a prospect or one of our clients, you know, know the pain points that they're feeling. We have people that have been in the industry and we know that we can solve it with our technology. So it's really gratifying when you can see a firm move from a manual process around engagement letters, for example, using Word documents to moving to our platform and being able to automate the creation of engagement letters and tracking all of the engagement letters inside a firm.
I was talking to one of our CEOs who adopted the engagement letter and Paul, my COO who you know, asked him a question. Well, “how do you feel like this year versus last year in terms of how you're doing on engagement letter?” He said, “I didn't know how I was doing last year. I couldn't track any of this.” He said, “now I've got a dashboard and can see everything that's happening inside my firm.” So we sometimes joke around. It's like they've seen fire for the first time when they see all these dashboards and all these things to track all the status of their organizers and their tax returns that they didn't have access to before. So It's pretty gratifying when you see people react to the technology that way.
Ross Devor:
Yeah, that's the measure of kind ROI or impact we're always looking for. Like, “well, it's taken me literally out of the dark ages.” We're like, “OK, check.” That's a great amount of progress there.
John McGowan:
Ha! Yeah, we did a LinkedIn post. We met with — and the other thing we do is we meet with all of our clients after busy season. We talk about what went well, if they're not using all of our modules, other modules that they can use. And we heard the term game changing, I think three or four times during one of the meetings, we actually posted that on LinkedIn. But, you know, that's the kind of reaction that we're getting. We actually, the CEO of that firm, dialed in via video and he said, “we've been in existence for 103 years.” And he said, “We've never been done with our taxes on April 13th and people not chasing tax returns down on the 14th and 15th.” He said “this was the quietest April 14th and 15th that we've had.” So that type of feedback is really gratifying.
Ross Devor:
Thats incredible. I can think of a couple emails that I got right around the 14th or 15th. Like, “hey, what about this and that?” But anyway, back to the product and back to how this platform and technology will evolve, and specifically AI. So, you know, I've read that you mentioned AI is gonna be a real transformational element for this space and the productivity and functionality that it brings. Talk to me about how you envision AI affecting your customers and being leveraged at HubSync.
John McGowan:
Well, the first thing I always say, and I've done a couple of podcasts on this topic, people are very nervous in the industry, “is AI going to replace me?” And I view AI, if you look at an average tax or audit professional and what they do, as a great co-pilot. If you look at what's happening with my development team at HubSync. I mean our developers are massively more effective because of the technology around AI and the ability to do unit tests and things. So I look at what we've seen with developers inside of HubSync and other companies like Salesforce.
And I think the same for tax and audit professionals. Just what we talked about earlier, Ross, people don't want to be, you know, mapping a trial balance. So now we've got an AI automapping capability where I used to manually map a trial balance by a chart. You now can hit an automap button and it does it for you or gets it largely right. If you look at tax, you know, in the traditional OCR and scanning process. You'd scan, get not so great accuracy on the documents, maybe 50 to 60%, And then someone would have to validate and correct the rest of the OCR to get the data into the tax offer. Now you look at a combination of OCR plus LLMs, you're getting to high nines accuracy with OCR and with intelligent document processing. So these are the types of things that really excite me in terms of making that audit and tax professional more productive, allowing them to upskill, be that value added advisor to clients versus doing some of the mundane tasks that we talked about earlier. The other thing that we've introduced inside of HubSync is just a document summarization capability. So a lot of time is spent collecting documents and analyzing the documents that come in to prepare an audit or a tax return. So we're drawing out a lot of hours through the technology that we're using with AI.
And then once you're done with the work, what these firms want to do is, “okay, how do I look across the corpus of knowledge that I'm sitting on now? How can I provide consultative advice to my clients? How can I search documents and do analytics and really sit down with a client and have a consultative conversation with you?”
You know, not to say that a tax return audit is not becoming completely commoditized, but everybody expects to get a great tax return or an audit from these firms. But what they really want is how can they be this advisor that sits down and talks to me about planning ideas and how can I have an effective tax rate that comes down through planning ideas? So these are the types of things that the firms really want to do is become that consultative advisor. The more hours you can draw out and the more you can use AI to do that, the more value added the experience is between the taxpayer and the client.
Ross Devor:
Yeah, that's really interesting how it's not just about faster, you know, cheaper ROI. This is about elevating the whole engagement with the customer to provide more strategic value.
John McGowan:
Absolutely.
Ross Devor:
And if you get the low ranking stuff out of the way done, the data capture, data preparation, et cetera, it allows you to change the conversation about how to provide better value and better service to those customers.
John McGowan:
100%.
Ross Devor:
Yeah, really, really interesting.
So let's turn to talking about the deal here and the process that you just went through. I'm sure you've learned a lot. We did as well.
John McGowan:
Yeah, I have.
Ross Devor:
What factors led you to go down the path to partner with us here at Thoma Bravo? And are there specific areas now after we've made this investment that you're hoping to prioritize with, kind of, the additional resources and capital that are in the business now?
John McGowan:
Absolutely. Now, well, I mean, we ran a very, very tight process, as you know. And we're very, very selective about who we worked with. I mean, Thoma Bravo is an amazing brand. I mean, you guys are second to none in terms of scaling SaaS companies. You know, we talked a lot about this, Ross, during the journey as we engaged that, you know, I've taken HubSync to this level and I really wanted to find the right partner to help me scale the business. And this is what Thoma Bravo does. So your groups of operating partners that can help your portfolio companies. The big thinking that you had about HubSync and the other thing that was just — that resonated with me, is really just your conviction on the business, my team, the platform. And I love the fact that you think big as well as an investor. And you saw the opportunity to take what we've built and really scale it and really transform and change an industry. We had some other investors that we talked to that were great, but I just didn't feel like they had the strategic vision on scaling HubSync that you and your team did. So we're really excited about this partnership. We know that we're able to grow and scale HubSync working very, very closely with you. We know we're just getting started, but we're really confident that we picked the right partner here.
Ross Devor:
That's great to hear and appreciate that some of that feedback and yeah, we did — we moved quickly.
John McGowan:
You did.
Ross Devor:
And with a lot of that built-in conviction after you spending time together and sinking our teeth into this problem and it just lines up so well with the types of not only technology and great products that we like to invest behind, but great leaders and great founders. And your experience, you know, building this, you know, type of technology before and living this experience which you've just told our listeners about really resonated with me in particular and lined up with how we'd like to bring operational resources to great innovators and entrepreneurs like yourself. And I think the business has, you know, really, really upped its game already thinking about what we can do driving even better products and bringing even more customer success resources and driving great transformation at our customers.
John McGowan:
Well I mean, our clients are excited about it. And we've talked to them about this and they see us making more investments into customer success, into support and to go to market. Obviously we're going to put more money into engineering. That's already one of our strengths that our clients know about. But I mean, they just see the investments that we're able to make partnering with you and we're having great conversations with them. There are some discussions, “HubSync is going to change culturally.” Like, no we're not, we're not changing.
Ross Devor:
Right, right, yes.
John McGowan:
Thoma Bravo is doubling down on what we're doing and allowing us to do more. We're not going to change our culture and why we've been successful. But partnering with you is going to allow us to do even more. So it's been great to talk to our clients about this investment and they're really excited about what we're going to do together.
Ross Devor:
Yeah, you know, I'm thinking about after the deal closed and all the times I, times I came to Tennessee and you came to Miami, and we finally got down to, “okay, we talked about all of these things, you know, during the process. Now let's really get down tactically, on what are all the areas that we want to invest in and get resources and planning and” listen, it's a very long list, which is the exciting part, right? You and I both —
John McGowan:
Well, we've talked about this. There's no shortage of what this industry wants and needs. I mean, we're not done with this journey. We're going to continue to invest in our current modules. I mean, we've talked about how we release every two weeks. I mean, we're getting such great feedback on products like engagement letter, and we're doing some new things around last mile automation that you know about. But also there's still a lot of pain points in this industry, Ross, that we've talked about document management and really getting to automated workflow, not the workflow that we've seen historically in the industry. We talked earlier about intelligent document processing. I mean, these are all areas that we feel we can double down on and continue to transform and really help our clients and really transform the tax and accounting industry. It's exciting.
Ross Devor:
Really, really exciting and I know you and I both agree we can't go fast enough. And so further on that journey, give me a sense for how you look out, you know, three, five plus years. Where do you see HubSync down the line? How do you see the company evolving?
John McGowan:
I just — people ask me this question a lot, you know, and you know, what’s the path that you want for the company? And my answer is we're just getting started. I mean, I really think we've just scratched the surface around what we can do for this industry. As we've talked about this, Ross, you know. I know we've talked as partners that we really feel we can transform this industry. And I really feel strongly about that. I mean, we were the only platform that's really attacking this problem comprehensively. We've got an amazing foundation. We've got an amazing client base.
And if I look at five years from now, I would like everybody to be using HubSync in the top 200, if not below the top 200. I think also, you know, I've done this before. We look at predominantly US focused now, but a lot of the problems that we see in the United States, we see the same problems in Europe. We've talked to firms over there that have similar problems and challenges around working with their clients. So we're very focused on the US market now, but I think there's definitely opportunities for geographic expansion and to take some of the great technology we built and expand outside the US as well. So there's many, many different trajectories and opportunities ahead. I think the next 12 months, you and I have our hands full. [chuckles]
Ross Devor:
Exactly.
John McGowan:
Five years from now, I hope we're having a great conversation around how we really just, you know, we just really want to help these professionals help their clients and help these firms transform. That's really what it's about and why I started the company. So we're just getting started and we're excited about the journey ahead with Thoma Bravo.
Ross Devor:
That's great, and I keep coming back to, sometimes you're evangelizing a new product or innovation. You've mentioned multiple times here, the customers are really working so closely with you. They already know and are living this pain point. They've already got you working as a thought partner and kind of a transformation partner. And so, so much of the road ahead is working so closely with those same customers and following them, if not to Europe or other geographies, but further down that innovation curve.
John McGowan:
Absolutely. I mean, I think — I think the clients see — what we found Ross is once they get a taste of what's possible with the technology, once they move from some of the manual and email processes, actually all the lights start going off and we start getting all these ideas around what HubSync could do for them. So as I mentioned earlier, it's an exciting time in this industry. Some people joke around, tax and technology is not the most exciting area, but I think it's amazing. It's a great market. And this is why I think you see private equity interest and so much investment interest in tax and accounting and traditionally legal and a lot of other industries have gotten a lot of attention, but there's such an opportunity to transform tax and accounting.
Ross Devor:
John, thanks so much for sharing all this backdrop of the history of how you founded HubSync, got it to this point and some of the inside scoop of what it was like to partner with us and get this deal done and set up the next chapter for HubSync. It's an exciting story and we're really fortunate and excited to be partnered with you on this next leg of the journey.
John McGowan:
Well, thank you. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your investment in HubSync. And most importantly, I'm really excited about what we're going to do together.
Ross Devor:
Game changer, like you said, and MJ behind you.
John McGowan:
Game changing. There you go.
Ross Devor:
You've made tax and accounting exciting and innovative for the listeners. So I know only you can do that, so thank you.
John McGowan:
Thanks, Ross, I appreciate it.
Ross Devor:
Thanks to John for coming out today. If you liked this episode, be sure to listen to next week’s episode of Beyond The Deal. Our mini series where we get to ask him anything. I'm Ross Devor, thanks for joining us.
Orlando Bravo:
Behind the Deal is brought to you by Thoma Bravo in partnership with Audacy’s Pineapple Street Studios. Join us next week for more stories behind the deal. Thanks for listening.
