Bootstrapped : The Lighter Side - The Podcast For B2B SaaS Founders · Lighter Capital - We Help Startups Grow

From Cash Flow to Exit: How Sharon Nouh Bootstrapped ProSpend to a Successful Acquisition

February 2, 2026·23 min·2 clips

An introduction to NYOB's CEO through Upropeller made ProSpend the first expense solution on their marketplace, a game-changing moment for sales.

Sharon begins with expenses. After years around corporate travel agencies, she kept seeing reconciliation slow people down, so she sold those businesses, got closer to travel tech, and built an expense-management app around the gap. ProSpend did not grow in some glossy founder-montage way. It grew through lonely decisions, practical asks, and a founder figuring out when grit was no longer enough on its own. Revenue gives the episode its spine. The host remembers Sharon having about $100,000 in revenue when they first met, then millions by the time ProSpend sold. The useful part is how plain the growth story feels. Sharon needed more than encouragement. She needed a serious network, people who could understand the company and point her toward the right rooms. That is where Upropeller comes in. Sharon was accepted as a portfolio CEO, and the value was both emotional and practical. Building solo can make even basic conviction feel shaky. Having credible people say the company had legs gave her enough steadiness to keep pushing. It also gave her access to connectors who could actually help. The product move was specific: Sharon wanted ProSpend to sit alongside ERPs through its first API integration. NYOB made sense as the first fit in the Australian market. When she spoke to Upropeller connectors, she asked for an introduction to that ERP contact, not vague advice or applause. The introduction came through, and the process showed her that experienced people could see the opportunity. The acquisition gives the story its ending. ProSpend was recently acquired by UK company ISH, turning a bootstrapped path into the kind of exit many founders chase while trying to keep ownership and control. Sharon's next chapter sounds calmer: still useful work, less of the extreme hours and stress, and a desire to help female founders with the experience she earned building, scaling, and selling ProSpend.

As heard by us

A grounded founder story about turning an expense pain point into scale, support, and a clean exit.

Sharon New's journey with ProSpend reads as a clear founder-to-scale story: a travel-business pain point becomes software, the product grows, and the company is later acquired by UK firm ISH.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

Hear how a travel expense pain point grew into ProSpend and ended in a UK acquisition.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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