Before Greg Poirier launched CloudKettle in 2015, he drafted a 10-year roadmap to acquisition.
The first-time founder had two decades of marketing experience, and he’d worked with companies that had been successfully acquired, including Radian6, which was acquired by Salesforce in 2011.
Using what he’d learned by observing those deals, Poirier hoped to achieve three goals with an acquisition, which he shared on The Paul Higgins Show:
- Create a nest egg.
- Wind down his professional years.
- Build a company that’s successful, even after its sale.
In 2025, CloudKettle turned 10 years old — and Poirier had successfully executed his 10-year plan. Here’s how he did it.
The tea on CloudKettle
CloudKettle, a Canada-based Salesforce consultancy, helps enterprises optimize and leverage Salesforce to increase pipeline and conversion rates and decrease churn. It also provides enhanced Salesforce security, an attractive feature for industries with high regulatory/compliance requirements.
According to a 2023 recap (the year before sale), 65% of CloudKettle’s clients were B2B SaaS, 9% financial services, 9% government, 9% higher education, 3% telecom, 3% health care and 3% retail.
About 90% of new clients came via referrals.
Throughout growth, CloudKettle remained bootstrapped and never took on debt. This was intentional. Poirier had helped lead startups that raised large sums of money. He knew he didn’t want to pitch to VCs, and he’d also seen firsthand how debt can dictate timelines. With his 10-year plan, it didn’t make sense. Plus, consultancies usually don’t raise money, instead relying on cash flow from services.
“Once you take money from someone, their timeline horizon and your timeline horizon are not necessarily going to meet and generally speaking, I knew mine was much longer than anybody who was going to invest,” he said.
Building to sell, with radical transparency
Poirier didn’t keep his 10-year plan a secret from his 50 employees. He wanted his team clear on his plan — so they could help execute.
“You can’t give them marching orders and not tell them the direction,” he said.
He also felt a moral obligation to be transparent. Poirier understands that, historically, services companies don’t always survive after an acquisition. Although that was his goal, it wasn’t guaranteed. He wanted his employees to make the best decision for themselves and their families.
Poirier also included stock options as part of employees’ compensation plans. Those who worked for CloudKettle for more than two years, were a Salesforce-certified architect, or were a member of the leadership team were automatically enrolled in the program.
Because employees held stock options, Poirier held quarterly all-staff meetings where he presented to employees as if they were board members. The goal was to help them feel empowered. He was transparent about the company’s financials, successes, obstacles, growth strategies and path to acquisition.
“I wanted those employees to profit from the fact that they stuck with us and helped make this happen,” Poirier said. “At the end of the day, a third of the company was held back for the employees.”
Selling CloudKettle: “The benefit of foresight”
As CloudKettle grew, Poirier met with other founders in the Salesforce ecosystem who had sold their companies. He asked what went wrong, what went right, how they structured their deals and more.
“I had the benefit of foresight,” he said. “When you have a plan from day zero that you’re going to exit the company in 10 years, along the way, you start to gather tidbits about how you do that acquisition.”
From these conversations, Poirier identified a common theme: Founders who used a broker had better outcomes. In fact, Poirier recommends founders connect with a broker a few years before selling, so they can “get your house in order in advance,” he told They Got Acquired.
“Maybe you could do [the transaction yourself], but is the person who’s done this for the past 20 years going to be better at it than you? Probably,” he said. “Could your time generate more value if you’re out there selling and making clients happy? Yes.”
While Poirier worked closely with his broker to maximize his sale, the buyer ended up coming from his network. It was BCE Inc., one of CloudKettle’s clients. BCE is Canada’s largest communications company, providing internet, mobile services and TV.
Even with the prep work and a broker at the helm, due diligence proved to be a hurdle, Poirier told us.
“We expected the process would be hard work, and it certainly was,” Poirier said. “One thing we did not account for was how much time you lose to due diligence and the preparation for sale. In our case, this took away from a lot of the sales and pipeline-building initiatives, which did have a negative impact on the business revenue immediately post-acquisition.”
In an annual recap, Poirier shared that the focus on the acquisition led to a dip in Q3 revenue.
Still, in June 2024, the acquisition closed — and within Poirier’s 10-year timeline. BCE acquired CloudKettle in an 8-figure deal.
“This exit has a huge benefit for some of those team members,” Poirier told Entrevestor, referring to employees who own stock options. “They’ll benefit financially from this transaction in the near term. But also, I hope it will give them the same elevated career opportunities that I received.”
After the acquisition, Poirier stayed on as president of CloudKettle to continue to grow the team.
