For Kim Walsh, it was never a question of whether she would someday lead a company. It was a matter of when she would step into the role.
Walsh has held a number of leadership positions after coming to Boston from Canada to attend Babson College. She rose through the ranks at HubSpot from inbound growth specialist to global VP of GTM partnerships and then guided sales, partnerships and customer success at Apollo.io.
Then she got connected to Practice Better, a Toronto-based company with a practice management software platform for health and wellness professionals. She connected with their mission and had her own ideas to support the company’s next stage of growth following its recent $27 million investment led by Five Elms Capital.
On Thursday, Practice Better announced that Kim Walsh joined the team as chief executive. She plans to stay in Greater Boston.
“For me, it’s less about being a CEO and it’s more about how can I help build and serve and grow an audience and serve employees and build teams to try and do something pretty impactful with our time,” Walsh said.
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Her desire to lead a team started at HubSpot, where Walsh said she was continually raising her hand to build new things. The first time was when she jumped on the opportunity to help HubSpot work with larger teams inside of companies. She built that business from zero to just under $100 million in revenue over five years, Walsh said. Then she was part of the team that helped create HubSpot for Startups. Walsh said this global business unit now accounts for about 10-15% of HubSpot’s revenue.
After over 11 years at HubSpot, Walsh left the Cambridge-based company to try some new things. She started harper ventures to fund underrepresented founders. She also spent time leading go-to-market work for Apollo.io.
Then, she met Nathalie Garcia, co-founder of Practice Better. The company’s focus on health and wellness spoke to her, especially after the passing of her father in 2018.
“He always said, ‘If you don’t have your health, you have nothing.’ And when I was growing up I didn’t really know what that meant,” Walsh said.
Now, Walsh says she understands what her father was saying. She also sees a connection between the work she did at HubSpot to help businesses grow and Practice Better’s software that helps people start or grow a health and wellness practice. Those customers include naturopathic doctors and mental health therapists.
“A lot of Practice Better customers have had other jobs or other roles in healthcare and they’re deciding to go on this health and wellness, becoming a coach, becoming a practitioner,” Walsh said.
Garcia was a dietitian and nutritionist who created Practice Better because she wanted to spend less time on the back-end work of her practice, Walsh said. Until it recently took on new funding, Walsh said Practice Better was bootstrapped. The company still managed to grow to more than 10,000 customers and is available in over 70 countries.
With new funding and a new leader, Practice Better is aiming to “go a little faster and take bigger swings,” Walsh said, describing Garcia’s vision for the company. Garcia will stay with Practice Better as chief strategy officer.
Walsh hopes to use the new funding to double-down on their product, grow their team and expand into new geographies.
“I feel pretty honored to help them write the next chapter,” Walsh said.
