Aidan Corbett and Jack Pierse, Wayflyer
Aidan Corbett is co-founder and chief executive of Wayflyer, while Jack Pierse manages all things finance and accounting at the company. Wayflyer provides working capital to ecommerce merchants for purchasing inventory and online marketing.
Q: What is your greatest business achievement to date?
A: We recently signed a $300 million finance deal with JP Morgan, the world’s biggest financial institution. This is a huge validation of our business model and gives us a huge opportunity to take our business to the next level.
Q: What was your “back-to-the-wall” moment and how did you overcome it?
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A: Like most start-ups, we struggled to raise our seed round. We had no track record in finance and struggled to convince VCs that we could effectively underwrite and fund ecommerce merchants.
We were funded by smaller angel cheques until we were able to get some early traction and then we were able to attract the VCs.
Q: What moment/deal would you cite as the “game changer” or turning point for the company?
A: The big game changer for the company was when we launched in the US in month three. It immediately became our biggest market and gave us the confidence to really invest in US expansion. Today it’s about 70 per cent of our business.
Q: What were the best and the worst pieces of advice you received when starting out?
A: The best advice was to go international early. We went into the UK in month one and were in the US in month three. We don’t believe in using Ireland as a pilot or as a test-bed. Just go international day one.
There’s lots of bad advice out there for start-ups. Perhaps the most dangerous mistake is scaling your team before you have cast-iron product-market fit. This advice of “grow fast or die” was more common in 2020/2021 than today.
Q: What are the big disruptive forces in your industry?
A: Covid has supercharged the move to everyday online shopping, which obviously Wayflyer has benefited from. The other disruptive force is supply chain difficulties. Many of our customers have to wait a lot longer for inventory to arrive from their suppliers.
Q: How will your market look in three years?
A: It will look a lot bigger. Long-term ecommerce is going to continue to grow globally and we’ll have lots more merchants to support.
Q: What are you doing to disrupt, innovate and improve the products or services you offer?
A: We’re going to launch additional products for ecommerce merchants, focusing on supply chain in particular. Can we help you get inventory faster and cheaper? Can we help you source new products? These are the challenges that merchants are flagging to us.
Q: What makes your company a good place to work?
A: We want to provide ambitious people with the best chapter of their career. We focus on giving our people ownership and opportunity in an enjoyable, supportive working environment.
Martin McKay, Texthelp
Martin McKay founded Texthelp in 1996 to help people with communication difficulties. It creates software that helps people read, write, express their thoughts and share information more accurately and fluently across all stages of life.
It aims to have had one billion customers by 2030. It employs 350 staff in Northern Ireland, Britain, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, the US and Australia. It generated revenue of £50 million last year.
Q: What vision/light bulb moment prompted you to start up in business?
A: When I was 12, my dad had a stroke and lost the ability to read, write and communicate. It had a profound impact on me and as soon as I was old enough, I started making assistive technology to help people communicate — to help them understand and to be understood.
Q: What is your greatest business achievement to date?
A: I’m not sure that I have done anything truly outstanding yet. I am pretty happy to be able to say that we are in 20 per cent of US school districts and we have helped over 100 million people.
Q: What was your “back-to-the-wall” moment and how did you overcome it?
A: We had a cash-flow crisis in the early days when we had about 20 people. I almost lost a chunk of the family farm — I was actually rehearsing how I would tell my family. We took a small additional cash investment from our VC investors. It was expensive.
Q: Where would you like your business to be in three years?
A: I want us to have materially increased our market penetration in the US education market; I would like to double our penetration by 2025/26.
We also need to drive real change among employers. When dyslexic students leave school, they do not leave dyslexia behind. We want to see major employers providing support for dyslexic employees.
Q: What are the big disruptive forces in your industry?
A: I like to think that we are at least one disruptive force in our market. The next wave of change in our space is being driven by big data and machine learning. We are lucky to be able to participate in this change because of our large user base.
Q: How will your market look in three years?
A: Diversity and inclusion is becoming a more important aspect of corporate life. People who used to be embarrassed about dyslexia are now talking openly about it. I think our market will be moving from what is probably a niche to a larger and more mainstream market.
Q: What makes your company a good place to work?
A: Since Covid, we have adopted a hybrid working pattern. Our employees really share our sense of mission. We are a social impact company and that is important for many of our employees. We want to be carbon neutral by 2026.
Q: How is the current inflationary environment affecting your business? How do you expect things to unfold?
A: Wage inflation is an issue for sure — it is for everyone in business. Input costs are increasing and that means product prices will need to increase.
Jamie O’Rourke, Mainline
Jamie O’Rourke is chief executive of Mainline, which is an industry provider in the renewable energy and engineering sectors. It operates in the power, water and telecoms sectors, with a strong focus on renewables.
Operating in Ireland, Britain and Scandinavia, it provides a wide range of services from the design and build of substations to the construction of airside aviation infrastructure, and turnkey wind and solar energy solutions. It generated revenue of €30 million last year.
Q: What vision/light bulb moment prompted you to start-up in business?
A: My parents were publicans and in those days you started pulling pints when you could reach the tap. My father was also a racecourse bookmaker and I “pencilled” for him as soon as I could multiply. He also had betting offices, so I was around the cut and thrust of business from a young age, and it was just something I always wanted to do.
Q: What is your business model and what makes your business unique?
A: Always a tricky question, but I would say one of the things is customer service, which was ingrained in me from a young age as my dad had studied hotel management. He operated the family pub to the standard expected in a top hotel.
As a result, the delivery of excellent customer service is part of Mainline’s culture and something I focus on on a daily basis.
Being upfront and honest in our discussions, providing a service that quickly identifies any shortcomings in a project’s scope, and then endeavouring to work with our clients to address issues in the most cost-effective manner is embedded in Mainline’s DNA.
Q: What is your greatest business achievement to date?
A: Taking a small, underperforming niche business in the renewables sector and transitioning it to the point where we are delivering the electrical works on some of the largest wind farms in Europe, and now to a business that is a key player in Irelands drive towards “net positive” — creating more energy than we consume.
Q: What was your “back-to-the-wall” moment and how did you overcome it?
A: Our business is all about managing risk and when you couple that with the significant growth we have achieved, it certainly brought some challenges.
We always maintain a strong focus on cash flow on a project-by-project basis and maintain a solid relationship with our bank, which knows and understands our business. This enables us to get out early ahead of any potential blips, and have the necessary financing in place.
Q: What moment/deal would you cite as the “game changer” or turning point for the company?
A: Winning our first major wind farm project in Sweden was probably the most significant moment, as it really put us on the map. It was a 73-turbine wind farm, and the site alone was the size of Louth.
Q: How will your market look in three years?
A: The focus on renewables is increasing every day. The war in Ukraine has accelerated this view, so I expect the renewables market to be very active in three years’ time, with work ongoing on several of Ireland’s offshore wind farms. Solar and battery storage will be well established and, hopefully, we will be producing hydrogen on a meaningful scale.
Mick Slein, Robus
Mick G Slein is chief executive of Robus, which is a lighting business. It is headquartered in Dublin, with distribution centres and presence in the UK, Australia, China, France, Benelux, South Africa, New Zealand, and the Middle East.
It services more than 3,000 stockists and tens of thousands of installers. It employs more than 250 people worldwide.
Q: What is your greatest business achievement to date?
A: Taking over as chief executive in February 2020 as Covid-19 struck. Navigating the business through this turbulent time, we managed to close 2021 with a record year and this was a huge testament to the decisions our people made during these times.
Q: What was your “back-to-the-wall” moment and how did you overcome it?
A: Finishing 38 per cent of our budget in March 2020 in my first full month as ceo [chief executive], which meant I had to ask our people to support the business in the form of a wage cut for the foreseeable future. Thankfully we got the opportunity to repay these wage cuts.
Q: What are the big disruptive forces in your industry?
A: The threat of online retail to our channel, which is via the electrical wholesaler. Robus only supplies the electrical wholesaler who is under threat from online entrants.
It is a highly competitive market and each partner in the supply chain is being squeezed from the supplier in China to the electrical contractor and everyone in between.
Q: How will your market look in three years?
A: I don’t believe there will be any dramatic changes but I believe more business will be executed online and we are noticing the change at different speeds depending on the geography, with Australia leading the march.
Q: What are you doing to disrupt, innovate and improve the products or services you offer?
A: We are in the middle of a significant digital transformation project with the key focus on making Robus easy to do business with. Everything now is about speed and ease of use. Across all industries, these are the brands that are winning.
Q: What makes your company a good place to work?
A: We invest significantly in everyone’s development and every person in Robus has their own specific personal development plan. Why? Because it is what everybody wants. If our people develop, the business develops and this creates further opportunities.
Q: What is the most common mistake you see entrepreneurs make?
A: I believe a lack of understanding of the meaning of strategy. This word is used liberally, and the vast majority of times people are referring to tactics rather than strategies.
A true strategy is a long-term goal or objective of the business that is supported by tactics and plans that align with the overall objective. The entrepreneur’s job is to co-ordinate these tactics and ensure everyone is aligned with the single overall business strategy.
Justin Lawless, Intact
Justin Lawless is chief executive of Intact, which works with merchant, wholesale and distribution businesses, providing software and technology solutions known as enterprise resource planning systems, which are designed to manage, automate and scale operations.
Intact employs more than 200 people and serves almost 3,000 companies, large and small, that use its software across Ireland, Britain, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. Its annual revenue this year is expected to be about €27 million.
Q: What is your business model and what makes your business unique?
A: We’re laser focused on core verticals, which means our software solutions deliver unique industry benefits. We then leverage the unique architecture behind our software that supports deep levels of code-free customisation.
Q: What is your greatest business achievement to date?
A: Our most significant business achievement has been to help our customers grow. In one particular instance, watching a customer scale from 150 employees to over 3,000 on our systems has been hugely rewarding for our team.
Q: What was your “back-to-the-wall” moment and how did you overcome it?
A: As a provider of technology and services to many in the building supply chain, I think the business’s most back-to-the-wall moment was during 2009 to 2013. The only way we could overcome that period was to continue investing in R&D and seek new channels to gain new customers, which was exactly what we did.
Q: Where would you like your business to be in three years?
A: Within three years, we will have more than 20,000 additional users of our platform across six different languages and win lots of new business in North America.
Q: What are the big disruptive forces in your industry?
A: Like every industry, the war in Ukraine, Brexit, inflation, skills shortage and Covid concerns are hugely disruptive right now.
More specifically, we see more and more real-life use cases for headless enterprise resource planning. This is where it extends further to the fringes of the business using role-specific tools and applications to enhance the digital transformation of business process.
Q: What are you doing to disrupt, innovate and improve the products or services you offer?
A: We are working closely with our customers to ensure concepts and technologies like endless-aisle, omni-market and omnichannel can be easily adopted by their businesses, ensuring they remain relevant and competitive in an increasingly digital world.
Q: How is the current inflationary environment affecting your business? How do you expect things to unfold?
A: We are very close to the real world when measuring inflation. Many of our customers are in the construction supply chain. What was a once a year process — automated price increases — are now a monthly occurrence. Naturally, this puts pressure on people, on wages and in a market where skills are short. This will continue to be disruptive for the rest of the year, I believe. I am not sure anyone can predict what way this will go.
Q: What is the most common mistake you see entrepreneurs make?
A: I often see people focus lots on technology and less on the relationships and the problems that technology resolves.
