"We chose Hg which is a great player in software...their goal is, on the contrary, to make us grow by allowing us to see the much bigger picture.

I spoke about the notion of being uninhibited. I can also talk about the benchmark that they offer us, the best practices that we can see from the moment when a fund joins us, which is a specialist. We are specialists in software, and they show us what made them the best in their sector."


In an exclusive interview with Inside Private Equity, Hugues Galambrun, CEO and Founder of Septeo, discusses the company's latest milestone of welcoming two new core shareholders – Téthys Invest and the sovereign wealth fund GIC. With a valuation surpassing €3 billion, Septeo, a leading software solutions provider in the legal sector with 200,000 users, is scaling up its operations.

Galambrun, an entrepreneur from the age of 25, shares his journey from creating a Spanish subsidiary during an internship to establishing Septeo in Montpellier with 3,000 employees and €350 million in revenue. The interview touches on Septeo's origins, its strategic partnership with Private Equity, and Galambrun's entrepreneurial philosophy and vision for the company's future growth and innovation.

And a beautiful story this month. This success story is currently in the news. Good evening Hugues Galambrun.

Good evening.

Thank you for being with us. You are the CEO and founder of Septeo. We're going to talk about it at length. Software solutions provider mainly in the legal sector.

And I can't resist this news since this is your first interview since the day before yesterday, when there was a very important announcement. Can you sum it up for us in a few words?

In a few words, it's complicated,

It's complicated. Yes, television is difficult.

We welcomed into our share capital two new core shareholders which are Téthys Invest, well known in France, since it is the investment vehicle of the Bettencourt-Meyers family and also a sovereign wealth fund which is GIC, a Singapore sovereign fund, who will join us. I listened carefully to what was said.

I am a user of Private Equity. So I see it differently than how it was expressed. They are joining us for the long haul. And in industries where huge investments in R&D are crucial, we need to think long term.

Okay, and that leads to a valuation which is quite impressive. 3 billion...is that right?

Yes, it's even a little bit more. But we can't say the exact number. So, there you have it.

Perfect, in any case, a significant fundraising operation. You scale up again. We'll talk about it.

Septeo, I summarize it in a few words: 200 thousand users; you are one of the top 10 software publishers; you have more than 3000 employees; your headquarters is in..., and your accent gives it away, is in Montpellier. 350 million euros in revenues. You are, and you claim in fact to be a centaur.

Before we talk about this “baby”, since you founded it, Septeo, Tell us about your journey before creating this software publisher.

My studies focused on economics and finance, but in fact, I have never worked in those areas in my life. I just created and developed businesses.

Were you a born entrepreneur?

You could say that, I'm an entrepreneur. What I have always liked, is to create, to develop and I've been doing it since I was 25, since I left school.

Because at that time we had military service, so there was one more year.

I remember.

And there you have it! I don't know.

But yes. And after your service, you say to yourself: I'm going for it. I feel like rolling up my sleeves.

That's not how it happened. I took an internship, I finished my studies in Spain, in Madrid, and I absolutely had to finish an internship in Spain. I came across an entrepreneur who said: So you want an internship in Spain? Very good, I just happen to need to develop Spain. You are going to create our subsidiary in Spain.

And I started like that. I developed Spain, I created in Spain. I became their partner. Actually, what's very funny, is that I repurchased it, 3 years ago with Sequoiasoft, since then we have consolidated, to use the expression, we recently consolidated it with Septeo Hospitality software. We bought Sequoiasoft, and with Sequoiasoft, I repurchased this brickwork that I had created 30 years prior in Spain.

It's a beautiful story.

It's a beautiful story, yes.

Where did the idea for Septeo come from? Did you say to yourself one day: I will create software publishing, in particular for law. We know that this is a very important sector.

In fact, Septeo was not born from this since Septeo was born from three partners who said to themselves, or had developed, my two historical partners had developed software for notaries. I had developed software for lawyers. And all three of us were originally from Montpellier, so we frequented the same places, saw each other at the airport/train station. And one day we asked ourselves, why couldn’t we work together to do something, like you just expressed just now.

Obviously it wasn't Private Equity. It was just the pooling of services. And we said to ourselves, why couldn't we, ourselves, create our shared service. In other words, purchasing, finance, HR, etc. which often annoy developers and creators so that each owner can devote themselves to their business and not be bothered by...

And with that we could reward the best skills on shared services tools which also make a difference and which are very important in a structure, but which often prevent owners from being agile in their markets. This is how it started.

I'll let you react, Frederick. This is interesting. We see that companies have an interest in it too. It can also precede a certain...

He did Private Equity before its time. It wasn't called that. He crafted it by hand. Then he created a champion. He did it all by himself at first, without sponsor. He pooled, he consolidated with other partners, he did Private Equity by bringing together three founders who have pooled their resources.

Is that it? You were Monsieur Jourdain of Private Equity before its time. How did you and your partners one day say: I need to appeal to Private Equity for me to develop?

My two partners needed to get out, needed to leave. So, that's one element also important for Private Equity which may not have been mentioned. “Cash-out” is an important element. It is important because indeed, it allows...

It's a bit of a life achievement, when one cashes out, when you are an entrepreneur, but it also allows those who remain me in this case, to be uninhibited in relation to this issue. Because when you are an entrepreneur, one element must be kept in mind, which is that everything you build and all your assets are in the company. All your assets are in the company, This means that if the company, if something happens, everything disappears.

And resorting to private equity, it also allows you to cash out a certain portion of these assets and to be free from a burden and to once again become the entrepreneur that you once were.

Because when we have a company of a certain level, which has a certain value, we think ultimately about the company’s value, We become wealth managers and no longer entrepreneurs. And we lose this momentum, the founding momentum of the company. And having done that gave me back, me anyway, and my two partners got out. So for them, it was something else. But it gave me back the entrepreneurial drive.

A breath of fresh air at that time.

I said to myself, well, okay, since I cashed out part of my assets, I can go, maybe go for it. I no longer dwell on certain issues, I become an entrepreneur again.

Yes, and you are obviously involved in all decisions. That doesn't change. What do you bring at this time? The funds that came in... Because there is also this dimension of governance, this human dimension and the fact, suddenly, to change scale.

Yes, we don't change scale all at once. We change scale because the company is growing. So it happens gradually.

But when choosing funds, funds which are good, I was going to say, the good ones, I don't know how to express it, but who are clairvoyant. We chose Hg which is a great player in software. We chose it because it was a great software player. They know perfectly well that their role is not to interfere in management, in the industrial sector. They’re not going to bother the leader, who, moreover, is still a shareholder. So their goal is, on the contrary, to make us grow by allowing us to see the much bigger picture.

I spoke about the notion of being uninhibited. I can also talk about the benchmark that they offer us, the best practices that we can see from the moment when a fund joins us, which is a specialist. We are specialists in software, and they show us what made them the best in their sector.

There are clear examples that...

Of course, we learn from their best practices to improve ours, not the worst ones. So we always look up and never down.

So that allows us to perform at a level we would never have imagined. It also allows us to perform better in the area of M&A. Since we organised an internal structure to go and acquire new businesses to build, to... This is exactly what you explained previously.

It also allows us to free ourselves from financial constraints. simply because we have this leverage. And once we understood this leverage, We are not going to play shopkeepers because we were shopkeepers, we made acquisitions beforehand. We made about ten of them, But we managed our acquisitions like shopkeepers. Such as making sure M&As were not too expensive, debt worries, everything needed to be from equity, things like that.

So does that make you uninhibited?

Very much so. And we accelerate much faster. And we did it in 4 years. We more than tripled the group in 4 years.

Yes, 3.5x, that's it.

And that means that we made almost as much in value...

You wouldn't have done it without Private Equity?

No, to be quite frank, we wouldn't have done it. No matter how intelligent and strong you are,

Wouldn't have done it alone. We understood it quite well indeed. In conclusion, are you a happy entrepreneur?

Passionate.

Passionate, yes. And it didn't hinder you, by the way, in decisions that you can take. I guess you are still overloaded with projects? No way.

Not at all. This is a new phase and it is a phase that has given us a lot of satisfaction, a lot of enthusiasm.