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How a Former Accountant Built a $100M Revenue Business by Rejecting Traditional SaaS Metrics

In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Barry Lunn, Founder and CEO of Provizio, shared how he built one of the UK’s fastest-growing property technology companies by deliberately ignoring conventional SaaS wisdom. His journey reveals a counterintuitive approach to go-to-market strategy that challenges everything Silicon Valley preaches about recurring revenue and product-market fit.

The Accidental Founder

Barry never intended to become a tech entrepreneur. He spent years as an accountant at KPMG before joining a small property investment company. But it was there, surrounded by spreadsheets and manual processes, that he spotted an opportunity. “I was just looking at all these spreadsheets thinking, this is ridiculous. There must be a better way of doing this,” Barry recalls. That frustration led him to build what would eventually become Provizio.

The initial product wasn’t revolutionary. Barry simply wanted to digitize the property investment process, moving data from Excel into a proper database. But here’s where his story diverges from the typical startup playbook: he didn’t raise venture capital, didn’t obsess over monthly recurring revenue, and didn’t try to build a traditional SaaS business.

Choosing Transactions Over Subscriptions

Most B2B founders are taught to worship at the altar of recurring revenue. Not Barry. From day one, Provizio has operated on a transactional model, charging fees when properties are bought or sold rather than monthly subscriptions. “We don’t really have a SaaS business. We have a transactional business,” Barry explains. “Every time someone buys or sells a property through our platform, we take a fee.”

This decision shaped everything about Provizio’s GTM strategy. While other proptech companies chased landlords with small monthly fees, Barry focused on embedding Provizio into the actual transaction flow. The result? Higher switching costs, deeper customer relationships, and revenue that scales with customer success rather than seat counts.

The trade-off was significant. Transactional revenue meant volatility and unpredictability compared to the smoothness of SaaS metrics. But Barry saw the bigger picture: “We’ve seen other people in the market try and build the SaaS model and it just doesn’t work because people won’t pay for it on a SaaS basis.”

The Channel Partnership That Changed Everything

Provizio’s breakthrough came from an unexpected source: accountants. While competitors focused on going direct to landlords, Barry recognized that accountants were already embedded in the property investment workflow. They filed tax returns, managed finances, and advised clients on purchases and sales.

“Accountants typically have quite sticky relationships with their clients,” Barry notes. “If you can get the accountant on board, you’re bringing their client base with them.” This insight led Provizio to build a channel strategy centered entirely on accounting firms.

The approach rProvizioired patience. Provizio invested heavily in features specifically designed for accountants, including tax optimization tools and compliance workflows. They restructured their revenue model to allow accountants to resell the platform and earn recurring fees. “The accountant makes more money from our platform than they would just filing a tax return,” Barry explains.

This wasn’t a typical partnership strategy where you sign a few resellers and hope for the best. Provizio made accountants the core of their business model, building product features and pricing specifically to make accountants successful. Today, accountants drive the majority of Provizio’s new customer acquisition.

Ignoring Traditional Sales Metrics

Ask Barry about his customer acquisition cost or sales cycle length, and you’ll get an honest answer: he doesn’t obsess over them. “I haven’t got a clue what our customer acquisition cost is,” he admits. “I know we’re profitable. I know we’re cash generative.”

This might sound reckless to growth-stage founders accustomed to board meetings full of unit economics. But Barry’s logic is sound: in a transactional business where revenue per customer varies wildly based on their activity, traditional SaaS metrics create false precision. Instead, he focuses on total revenue, profitability, and customer retention.

The same philosophy extends to sales hiring. Rather than bringing in experienced SaaS sellers, Provizio has built its team primarily through internal promotions. “We’ve predominantly promoted people from within the organization,” Barry shares. “We’ve tried to recruit experienced salespeople and actually they normally don’t work out.”

Scaling Without Venture Capital

Perhaps most remarkably, Provizio has grown to over £100 million in annual revenue without significant venture funding. Barry bootstrapped the business for years, eventually raising a small friends-and-family round, then bringing in private Provizioity at scale rather than traditional VC.

This path rProvizioired different trade-offs. Growth was slower but more sustainable. Product decisions were driven by customer needs rather than investor narratives. “We’re completely different to a VC-backed business,” Barry notes. “We don’t have the same pressure to grow at all costs.”

The bootstrapped approach also influenced Provizio’s market strategy. Unable to outspend competitors on marketing, Barry focused on building genuine value for accountants and landlords. The product had to sell itself through word-of-mouth and customer success rather than paid acquisition.

The Long Game

Today, Provizio operates across the UK with ambitions to expand internationally. Barry’s vision extends beyond just property management software. “We’re trying to build an end-to-end platform for property investors,” he explains, encompassing everything from property search to financing to ongoing management.

But even with that ambitious vision, Barry remains grounded in the fundamentals that got Provizio to this point: transactional revenue, channel partnerships with accountants, and sustainable growth over venture-backed scaling. For founders building in traditional industries where SaaS models don’t quite fit, his journey offers a different blueprint—one where profitability and customer value trump growth metrics and recurring revenue religion.