A $12M MSP that became a $65M platform. Then rolled into a $250M national MSP.Most MSP owners think scaling past $10M is about more sales, more clients, or more acquisitions.
This conversation challenges that.Brian Hoppe sits down with Kevin Blake, former CEO of TechMD and current President of Integris, to unpack what it really takes to grow from a founder-led MSP into a private equity-backed platform.
This is not a conversation about growth for growth’s sake. It’s about leadership layers, financial maturity, culture, integration, and the hard decisions owners have to make before the business can scale beyond them.
In this episode:
- Why the leadership team that gets you to $10M may not get you to $50M
- How Kevin used acquisitions to grow from $12M to roughly $65M
- Why full integration creates pain upfront but unlocks value later
- What private equity changes about the CEO’s role, reporting, and decision-making
- Why ICP discipline, clean data, and hard people decisions matter before an exit
If you’re trying to build an MSP that can scale beyond the founder and become more valuable to a future buyer, this is the conversation.If you want to go deeper on the levers behind growth and valuation, you can get the Value Creation Blueprint here:
https://brianhoppe.com/blueprint/
Key Moments
1:31 - What MSP owners misunderstand about growing from $10M to $50M
5:43 - Kevin’s path from early employee to CEO of TechMD
8:30 - The first acquisition and why Kevin needed an M&A playbook
12:57 - Selling 80% of the business to private equity in March 2020
18:10 - Joining Integris and becoming part of a $250M national MSP
21:37 - Why clean data and a true CFO become critical at scale
31:57 - The complexity of merging cultures and managing a board
43:43 - Why culture becomes harder and more important as the company scales
48:25 - What an $8M to $10M MSP should fix before a future exit
57:01 - Kevin’s biggest mistake as a leader
Connect
Brian Hoppe
https://brianhoppe.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianhoppe
Kevin Blake
Integrishttps://integrisit.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-blake-2b526a3/
