From startup to sale: The power of vision, strategy, entrepreneurial leadership and innovation

Last month, as I pe­rused the busi­ness sec­tion in the lo­cal news­pa­pers, two ar­ti­cles at­tract­ed my at­ten­tion, the first a sto­ry on the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank’s in­ter­est in the lo­cal ven­ture cap­i­tal ecosys­tem, and the sec­ond, the com­ple­tion of a two-part sale trans­ac­tion which end­ed with the sale of 55 per cent share­hold­ing of Trinidad Sys­tems Lim­it­ed (TSL) to the

PBS Group, a lead­ing Caribbean tech­nol­o­gy and busi­ness-so­lu­tions con­glom­er­ate with a foot­print across the Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­ca.

These two events sparked my in­ter­est. First­ly, many years ago I spear­head­ed the ini­tia­tives of the Trinidad and To­ba­go (T&T) gov­ern­ment to de­vel­op the ven­ture cap­i­tal (VC) in­dus­try, an as­sign­ment that high­light­ed gaps in the lo­cal ecosys­tem for risk/ven­ture cap­i­tal in par­tic­u­lar,and en­tre­pre­neur­ial fi­nance in gen­er­al. I pon­dered what was go­ing to be done to ad­dress the chal­lenges.

Sec­ond­ly, the TSL sto­ry in­ter­est­ed me be­cause it pro­vid­ed the trig­ger for an in­struc­tive ac­count of how a T&T busi­ness seized op­por­tu­ni­ties, grew, scaled, in­no­vat­ed, and adapt­ed its busi­ness mod­el to cre­ate val­ue and re­alise the vi­sion of its founder.

Where the VC and TSL in­ter­ests in­ter­sect is the is­sue of ac­cess to cap­i­tal and the ex­tent to which fi­nan­cial cap­i­tal though im­por­tant for busi­ness suc­cess, is of­ten­times over­stat­ed as the main pre­req­ui­site for en­tre­pre­neur­ial ac­tion.

The TSL sto­ry re­it­er­ates that vi­sion and lead­er­ship mind­set are pri­ma­ry levers of suc­cess for star­tups.

Giv­en that nei­ther time nor space al­lows this au­thor to do jus­tice in ad­dress­ing both is­sues in one ar­ti­cle, the TSL sto­ry will be ad­dressed, and the VC sto­ry will be de­ferred.

TSL from of­fice equip­ment to tech­nol­o­gy

Trinidad Sys­tems Lim­it­ed was found­ed in 1979 by Nicholas Galt in an era when the tech­nol­o­gy land­scape dif­fered sig­nif­i­cant­ly from to­day’s dig­i­tal econ­o­my. TSL ini­tial­ly start­ed as a com­pa­ny sell­ing of­fice equip­ment. How­ev­er over time, the com­pa­ny ven­tured in­to soft­ware de­vel­op­ment and tech­nol­o­gy so­lu­tions.

At the time of its mar­ket en­try, the idea of a suc­cess­ful Caribbean tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny would have seemed re­mote. Yet to­day, there is ev­i­dence that an in­dige­nous T&T com­pa­ny that emerged sell­ing of­fice equip­ment be­came an en­ti­ty that at­tract­ed the in­ter­est of a ma­jor re­gion­al con­glom­er­ate, ap­prox­i­mate­ly half a decade lat­er.

The Sep­tem­ber 8, 2026, an­nounce­ment by the PBS Group of its ac­qui­si­tion of the re­main­ing 55 per cent in­ter­est in TSL, fol­low­ing its ac­qui­si­tion of 45 per cent in 2024 is the lat­est chap­ter in a re­mark­able sto­ry that high­lights the in­ter­con­nect­ed­ness of vi­sion, strat­e­gy, in­no­va­tion, and en­tre­pre­neur­ial lead­er­ship.

The TSL sto­ry spans mul­ti­ple strands of busi­ness and pro­vides lessons on col­lab­o­ra­tions and part­ner­ships, ca­pac­i­ty and ca­pa­bil­i­ties, pro­pri­etary tech­nol­o­gy, suc­ces­sion in small and medi­um en­ter­pris­es (SMEs), the im­por­tance of a hos­pitable en­tre­pre­neur­ial ecosys­tem and the role of the state in the im­ple­men­ta­tion of poli­cies and frame­works that en­sure that the jour­ney from idea to en­ter­prise is im­pact­ful for en­tre­pre­neur, share­hold­ers, com­mu­ni­ty and coun­try.

In my re­cent con­ver­sa­tion with Nicholas, he in­ti­mat­ed that TSL’s phi­los­o­phy was root­ed in iden­ti­fy­ing the prob­lems of to­mor­row and de­vel­op­ing prod­ucts to meet cus­tomers’ needs through re­search, in­no­va­tion, agili­ty, and tech­nol­o­gy adop­tion.

While to­day we de­scribe this as be­ing fu­ture-ori­ent­ed, it is clear that Galt’s vi­sion was the ba­sis for strate­gic ac­tion.

En­tre­pre­neur­ial lead­er­ship

In its 47-year jour­ney, TSL de­vel­oped soft­ware, di­ver­si­fied its of­fer­ings, ex­pand­ed across the Caribbean, built a sub­stan­tial cus­tomer and part­ner base, tran­si­tioned its lead­er­ship, and be­came at­trac­tive and valu­able to a larg­er re­gion­al group.

The TSL sto­ry is there­fore not just about the sale, but more so about the lega­cy of its founder Nicholas Galt.

The true test of en­tre­pre­neur­ial lead­er­ship lies in build­ing a com­pa­ny with the vi­sion to an­tic­i­pate change, the strat­e­gy to pur­sue op­por­tu­ni­ties, the ca­pa­bil­i­ty to in­no­vate and the ca­pac­i­ty to cre­ate val­ue that en­dures be­yond the founder.

The tran­si­tion from founder-lead­er­ship to the next gen­er­a­tion of man­age­ment demon­strat­ed an­oth­er strate­gic ca­pa­bil­i­ty of TSL. The tran­si­tion is in­dica­tive of a con­cert­ed ef­fort to en­sure that the new lead­er­ship pos­sessed the ca­pa­bil­i­ty to car­ry the vi­sion for­ward while main­tain­ing a cul­ture in which em­ploy­ees are will­ing to adapt.

Nicholas Galt’s even­tu­al tran­si­tion from the po­si­tion of chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer, the nam­ing of a suc­ces­sor and his as­sump­tion of the role of ex­ec­u­tive chair­man is a les­son to lo­cal and re­gion­al fam­i­ly-owned and founder-led SMEs on lead­er­ship suc­ces­sion.

From lo­cal en­ter­prise to strate­gic as­set

The staged sale of TSL to PBS pro­vides valu­able lessons on how val­ue can be cre­at­ed in an en­ter­prise dur­ing its life­time. It is fair to as­sume that the two-phased sale, 45 per cent in 2024 and 55 per cent in 2026 was like­ly de­lib­er­ate and un­der­tak­en to avoid any pos­si­ble fall­out.

The two-phase ap­proach had the po­ten­tial to dis­pel any no­tion of a hos­tile takeover and con­veys a mu­tu­al­ly ben­e­fi­cial re­la­tion­ship in which TSL and PBS agreed that PBS would ac­quire much more than TSL’s phys­i­cal as­sets and tech­nol­o­gy.

In­tan­gi­bles such as TSL’scapa­bil­i­ties, re­la­tion­ships, the trust de­vel­oped with cus­tomers, the knowl­edge and ex­pe­ri­ence of its hu­man re­source, tech­no­log­i­cal ex­per­tise, part­ner­ships, rep­u­ta­tion, mar­ket ac­cess, and or­gan­i­sa­tion­al ca­pac­i­ty rep­re­sent­ed sig­nif­i­cant strate­gic val­ue.

The trans­ac­tion demon­strates how years of in­vest­ment in ca­pa­bil­i­ties, peo­ple, re­la­tion­ships, and rep­u­ta­tion can trans­form a lo­cal en­ter­prise in­to a strate­gic as­set with val­ue be­yond its orig­i­nal mar­ket and in­to the fu­ture.

The les­son for SMEs in Trinidad and To­ba­go

At a time when di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion and the cre­ation of glob­al­ly com­pet­i­tive busi­ness­es con­tin­ue to be at the fore­front of dis­cus­sions on T&T’s re­silience, the TSL sto­ry of­fers a tan­gi­ble ex­am­ple of what is pos­si­ble when vi­sion, strat­e­gy, in­no­va­tion, and en­tre­pre­neur­ial lead­er­ship are sys­tem­i­cal­ly em­bed­ded in an en­ter­prise.

Al­so cen­tral to the TSL suc­cess sto­ry is em­ploy­ee en­gage­ment. Galt was com­mit­ted to peo­ple de­vel­op­ment and the cre­ation of an in­clu­sive cul­ture that val­ued TSL’s hu­man cap­i­tal.

“Em­ploy­ees at TSL did not just come to work, they were pro­vid­ed with the op­por­tu­ni­ty to learn, im­prove, to build ca­reers and to be part of a team suc­cess sto­ry”. These words, ex­pressed to me in a re­cent con­ver­sa­tion with Galt, re­flect his hu­mane side.

The TSL sto­ry demon­strates that de­spite chal­lenges en­coun­tered, Galt and his team were able to strate­gi­cal­ly in­no­vate to nav­i­gate the en­tre­pre­neur­ial course. This is the essence of en­tre­pre­neur­ship; the tak­ing of risks in pur­suit of op­por­tu­ni­ties and the lead­er­ship re­quired to ef­fec­tive­ly mo­bilise and re­con­fig­ure re­sources as con­di­tions change.

Very im­por­tant­ly al­so, this is what a good lega­cy is about, cre­at­ing val­ue that sus­tains af­ter the founder has de­part­ed.

Nicholas Galt is Pres­i­dent Emer­i­tus of The Amer­i­can Cham­bers of Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean and an in­ductee in the Busi­ness Hall of Fame of the Trinidad & To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce

Dr Ju­dith M S Mark, Busi­ness Strat­e­gy Con­sul­tant, Ed­u­ca­tor, Aca­d­e­m­ic Coach & ad­vo­cate for in­no­va­tion-dri­ven lead­er­ship. Email: ju­dith­m­mark@gmail.com