Enterprise Times spoke to Lyndon Stickley, CEO of iplicit, to better understand the company’s progress over the past year and his ambitions for the future. I last spoke to Stickley in September 2023, and the messaging is now more confident and ambitious.
He commented, “Today, iplicit represents the next step in a born in the cloud, powerful cloud accounting solution for those that need to migrate off of on-premise software, and they don’t have a clear path.
“This is either because their vendor hasn’t got anything to offer them, like Exchequer and Pegasus, or the vendor only has a cloud solution that is highly disruptive and punitive, like Dynamics, (Sage) Intacct, Access and others. Effectively, we’re the affordable, powerful cloud accounting solution.”
The firm is also seeing interest from fast growing Xero and QuickBooks customers that have outgrown that solution. He acknowledged that they often consider NetSuite but added, “It’s indigestively disruptive and expensive.”
Constant growth and new partners
iplicit has 100% growth for the sixth year in a row, and Stickley believes that trend will continue into 2025. The firm now has 400 sites, used by 2,000 organisations, with 30,000 users on the platform every day. They contribute to an impressive £6.5 million ARR. The firm continues to grow and plans to have around 150 employees by the year-end, which includes 3 recent senior hires. It has now reached that target figure.
Last year he indicated that iplicit would launch into the US in 2025. That has now been delayed by 18 months. The reason is that with 100%+ growth and a target market of 90,000, there is enough business in the UK to fuel the trajectory. The US is a much larger market and Stickley appears to be building the organisation towards that.
One example is the partner network that iplicit is now growing. The network is a mix of resellers, MSPs and accountants. Some of the accounting partners also have operations in the US or are part of a global network. Stickley intends to launch in the US using these alliances, which makes sense.
Growing at the expense of more than legacy vendors
iplicit is growing rapidly, and Stickley claims to have interviewed 23 people from Intacct, hiring eight so far. He also sees customers migrate from the cloud-based Intacct because it is too American-focused. Those customers left Sage 50 to move to Sage Intacct.
Stickley sees a huge opportunity in the Sage customer base. He said, “We estimate about 75,000 need to do something, and they need to do something beyond Xero and QuickBooks, and not at the NetSuite or Dynamics, disruption and cost level.”
iplicit is targeting 5,000 live sites to achieve £100 million ARR. The inference being that the iplicit ACV is around £20k, which Stickley believes is a third to half the cost of comparable alternative solutions.
To help iplicit scale, it has recently strengthened both its sales leadership team and its advisory council. He has added Øystein Moan, Executive Chairman and former CEO of business software company Visma, as a Non-Executive Director. Nic Humphries, Senior Partner and Executive Chairman of Hg and head of its Saturn fund, is now a Strategic Advisor.
Stickley commented, “They said we’d like to be involved with you because it’s like watching the birth of NetSuite again. At our last private placing, we did allow them to come in, just in a personal capacity only, to join our team and help us build that next-generation NetSuite effectively, or the affordable NetSuite.”
iplicit has also appointed three experienced leaders as well. Damon Anderson becomes CMO, Paul Sparkes is nowChief Product Officer and Scott Regnier is now UK Head of Sales.
On growth at iplicit
iplicit is growing, but is it growing fast enough? The company has taken some funding, as Stickley mentioned, but it is not the same amount that startups raise to accelerate their growth. Is there a risk that another vendor could get bigger funding and outpace you?
Stickley replied, “Interesting point. Firstly, I don’t believe someone can snatch the reins technically. It’s taken us 10 years to build what we’ve built. Now, there will be AI tools that can do various functions that can assist, but what we’ve built is a behemoth of a system.”
According to Stickley, iplicit is intuitive to implement. He believes the firm could have grown faster, but he hasn’t wanted it to. Trying to accelerate growth too fast was the wrong approach, he says, adding, “the wheels would have fallen off of service or deployment or engineering.”
Instead, the company is growing steadily, at 100% every year, with a churn of around 1%. ipclicit is the 18th fastest growing company in the UK according to the FT1000 list. In addition, Stickley notes that they do not impose multi-year contracts. Will growth accelerate even faster, though?
Stickley replied, “I do think there will be an inflection point where we do grow faster. And that inflection point will be 18 to 24 months when our partner network is more mature. Our deployment capacity is more established.”
Target Market
When I spoke to Stickley last year, iplicit had a long list of target industries. Over the years, the firm has been successful in Multi Academy Trusts, and I have also seen wins across entertainment and nonprofits. What is the focus today?
Stickley replied, “We’ve structured our AEs on a core six or seven verticals, but actually, there are about 20 established verticals that have fairly similar needs. We’ve got an open API that gives a similar seamless integration into industry systems, whether that might be the care home management or hotel booking or donor systems in nonprofits or into the DfE for multi-academy trusts.
“The reality is our core platform is a generic, capable core for multiple sectors. Our primary sectors are care homes, nonprofits, multi-academy trusts, recruitment agencies, performing arts, fast growth SaaS companies, hotel & leisure and tech.”
iplicit has added around 350 schools in the first six months of the year. Stickley explained why it is having such success. They are replacing PS Financials, Exchequer and Pegasus. While there is an upgrade to IRIS Financials, this is an on-premises technology, according to Stickley. Adding a new school or site means a new implementation. On iplicit, it takes three minutes.
Partners are becoming important
A year ago, iplicit was 95% direct. Over the last year, that has changed. It is now 62% direct sales, and the education sector boosts that number as that is primarily direct. In terms of the breakdown, Stickley revealed that 8% is coming through ex-Sage partners and resellers.
Of the remainder, 12% is coming through accountants, and 14% is coming through international. However, some recent large deals have skewed this slightly, according to Stickley.
iplicit is attracting some significant partners in the UK. Eureka Solutions, who is also a Sage and NetSuite partner, is now within the iplicit ecosystem. Stickley noted, “Eureka Solutions deploys now at pace and generate their opportunities, and we chuck them opportunities for deployment too, as well as their customers.”
Seventeen out of the top one hundred accountants in the UK are also partners. Stickley expects some of them to invest further in the relationship and become Centres of Excellence for iplicit. This year it launched the iplicit advisory council, with members from twelve large accounting firms providing advice on the roadmap.
The international part is mainly in Ireland, where it has a successful partner, though there are some in New Zealand and Australia.
Looking forward to next year
What do you hope to achieve by the end of 2025?
Stickley revealed that iplicit aims to have completed its first external funding by the end of 2024. Stickley commented, “This year is all about the seeding. Next year’s going to be all about the execution. I’m excited everything we’ve got is growing at pace, but I’m most excited about our partner network because there’s always a delay on that once you get them signed and trained and you get a couple of deals.”
With that new funding in place, I asked Stickley whether iplicit was looking at acquisitions. He replied, “Not at all, not any right now.”
In future, especially as iplicit makes a significant raise in 2027 to launch in the US, they may consider an acquisition. Others have done so to get a footprint of a location and people in the US market.
On Challenges and Priorities
Stickley believes iplicit is still the underdog in many deals and is relatively unknown. That has been improving. Stickley explained, “We were at 7 exhibitions last year and have attended 31 exhibitions this year, and another 31 in 2025. I feel that the impact of those will start to move the dial on our brand awareness. That and having employed Xero’s ex COO who’s now our CMO and has built a 15 person marketing engine that will really come into its own in 2025.”
Stickley believes, will lead to 2025 being a breakthrough year, where he hopes the sales team will no longer have to work so hard to be on the long lists of prospects. He expects 2025 to be the tipping point where iplicit will become the go-to solution for the mid-market in the UK.
As 2025 looms, I asked Stickley what his priorities as a CEO are. He says he has four priorities.
Existing staff
Morale, vision, motivation and communication with the team are key priorities. He added, “I’m always there as the North Star for all staff to ensure they’re always aligned at knowing what they need to do and how they fit within that.”
Strategy
Stickley already has a COO who executes the strategy for the current year, with a strong CSuite to support him. He is always working on next year’s plan, which is, when complete, handed over to the COO once he is confident that it will be executed correctly. He is already working on the plan for 2026.
Hiring
Recruiting partners pass across a pipeline of new staff to Stickley. He works closely on recruitment to ensure that the right people are hired for the organisation, to maintain the culture. The firm was recently placed in the Sunday Times top ten places to work.
Stickley explained how he makes his selection, “I’ll see ten people, and five can do the job comfortably, but we only want one of those. I’ll discourage four by saying, Are you sure you want to join a bunch of nutters that are climbing this mountain? Are you sure you want to join a cause?
“This is a lot of blood, sweat and tears. This is different. And I put people off to make sure that the ones that do join are the ones that are like-minded, that really want to join.”
Investors and funding
Finally, Stickley spends a lot of time talking to investors and potential sources of funding. He gave individual first-half financial updates to 58 funds. Fourteen of those might participate in the next investment round. Others want to keep in touch for later, larger rounds.
He added, “I have a strong relationship with about 70 odd funds now that track us, and I’m continually keeping them updated, and continue sounding out the market and keeping them in the mix and the loop.”
On AI
Stickley was also keen to talk about his view of AI. He sees it both as an opportunity and a threat. He explained, “There are a bunch of areas we can identify where AI is driving efficiencies, in-app help, Chatbots, and learning management. We’ve got Microsoft Copilot within the application, and there will be more noise coming out about that.”
However, the threat is about what else AI can do. The CTO and product teams are looking in detail at the threat.
What is that threat? Stickley answered. “Right now, we believe that what we built has taken 10 years to build, and the barrier to building what we’ve built is quite high, but we know AI does change the game over time, and we are keeping a close eye on it.”
The book question
What was the latest book you read? What was your take out from it?
“Three different random sources in my world in the last month, out of nowhere, all mentioned Anna Karenina from Tolstoy (Amazon Aus, UK, US). I’m not a big literature fan at all. To be honest, I’m not a big reader. I’m a big doer, and I do most of my learning from mentors and people in the game. I’m learning from Øystein Moan and Nic and my chairman and so on.
“I’ve got two teenage sons who are reading books like ‘mad-to-be billionaires’. Everything’s how to self-help and how to succeed. For some strange reason, these three references came in about Anna Karenina, and I thought, I’m going to have a look at that.
“It was four quid off of Amazon, and it’s arrived. It’s a big book, and I’m about to start it. I’ve got no idea whether that’s going to be any good or not, but I just thought, Oh, the universe is telling me I should read that book because I’ve never heard of it, and now it’s coming up three times!”
