‘We’re going to spend some real dollars on our cloud marketplace’: Climb CEO on gargantuan goals

Dale Foster talks marketplace upgrade, acquisitions in sight, and new geographies

Climb Global Solutions, which shared “exceptional performance” in its Q2 results, now expects to finish on track at about $2bn (£1.5bn) in revenue this year, its CEO Dale Foster tells CRN.

The NASDAQ-listed firm, which counts offices in Dublin, Ashburton, London, and the Netherlands, with in-country sales reps in France and Germany, sees 15 per cent of its market share coming from Europe.

But the CEO doesn’t want to settle for 15 per cent, as he sees significant opportunity in partnering with smaller players.

“The US is highly competitive with three massive distributors, whereas Europe is ripe for roll-up opportunities.”

Cloud marketplace ambitions and the Amazon experience

To propel development in the near future, the firm intends to develop its offering, notably its cloud marketplace, which it expects to account for between 20 and 30 per cent of overall business by the end of 2026.

Despite “a pretty decent engine” with 15 vendors on its platform, the company chief admits “it’s nowhere near the complexity or capability of Pax8.”

“Pax8 raised hundreds of millions of dollars, tons of engineering and development time. They have a great platform.

“And this is one of the reasons I made a change to my CIO; we’re going to spend some real dollars.”

As part of its strategy shift, Foster explains that Climb has completed its transition to Microsoft as its ERP provider in July 2024, a move that intends to unify operations across acquisitions and regions.

With complexities such as multi-currency support now stabilised, he says the business is well-positioned for its next phase of transformation.

“It was critical to get that infrastructure in place first,” the CEO says.

“We had to ensure consistency across all our entities before we could build anything else on top.”

Now, his attention is turning to the development of a new digital marketplace, one Foster wants to integrate directly with the ERP but which delivers a consumer-grade user experience.

“What we’re aiming for isn’t the AWS experience, it’s the Amazon experience,” the leader adds.

“We want it to feel like buying something on Amazon: simple, fast, intuitive.

“That’s how we think emerging tech software should be bought; like an emerging hyperscaler.”

The marketplace will launch in 2026 as an upgrade to the Climb Expedition marketplace.

“It doesn’t matter where a customer is located; as long as we’re licensed to sell the product, they’ll be able to acquire it through the platform.”

The new offering is aimed at MSPs, hybrid VARs, and resellers, particularly those whose business models are increasingly platform-based or who are seeking a single interface to manage consumption, licensing, and SaaS products.

Companies on the radar

The business is looking to make further investment in companies with a strong vendor fit, ideally in emerging technologies.

Before it makes any buyout move across the continent, the firm’s model is to place reps in-country, get to know the landscape, and assess whether an acquisition makes sense, based on culture fit, market, and vendor compatibility.

“Our sweet spot is 90 per cent software, and our focus is cybersecurity, datacentre, and virtualisation tools,” he explains.

Acquisitions have had a big impact on Climb in the past, as DSS, the education-focused distributor purchased in 2024, has positively impacted the company’s earnings for the last two quarters.

“They were doing about $190m in revenue when we acquired them,” says Foster, adding that the investment has had a big impact since the deal was made in July.

“For Q3, we’ll only have one month of year-on-year comparison where they’re fully consolidated.

“Their contribution will normalise once we move into clean year-over-year comparisons.”

The success of the merger is also partly seasonal, as the company has been “very active” in what the CEO refers to as the K-12 space - the publicly funded years of education in the US and Canada, spanning from kindergarten to 12th grade - and higher education space.

“We were already selling into K-12 and higher ed. We just weren’t tracking it separately,” he says.

“Now, with DSS, we’re directly into that vertical with Adobe.

“I’d argue Adobe is one of the top five AI companies in the world, and most people don’t even realise it.

“It’s insane how much AI is built into their products across the board.

“They’re right up there with Microsoft in terms of capabilities, especially in the creative space.”

The distributor also has four European organisations on its radar, and the IT leader tells CRN he’s already met with all of them in-person and plans to “pull the trigger on one or two of them this year.”

“They’re small, but they’re strategic,” explains the CEO.

Pulling the trigger on new territories

While much of the distie’s current focus is on Europe and North America, other regions are on its radar.

“We’re not active in Asia, Africa, or LATAM yet.

“But I’ve looked at opportunities; LATAM, the Middle East, even Australia, which could be our gateway to APAC.

“We haven’t pulled the trigger, but it’s definitely happening in the future.”

The company believes it still has plenty of room to grow, even without entering those markets immediately.

“We think we can double in size and still barely register to the big players.

“And we’ll do it both organically - we’re growing double digits already - and through acquisitions.

“The balance sheet is strong, the team is ready, and the board is backing us to move like a private equity firm, even though we’re in a public NASDAQ shell.”