Stephen O’Leary’s journey to becoming Dublin Chamber’s youngest president at age 33 was anything but conventional. He had spells in journalism, software sales, and international sports management before setting up his social-listening and online-media-monitoring company Olytico in 2009.
“I studied journalism in Griffith College Dublin,” he recalls. “I enjoyed it so much that I went back to teach there. I also became a fellow of GCD. I worked for the Irish Examiner for a year after I qualified. I enjoyed myself immensely.”
But there was something missing. “I realised that something I craved was measurable success. I like to keep score. I played a lot of sport growing up and I wanted to see success and failure in black-and-white terms. I was in my early 20s back then, of course.”
That need for clear performance measurement led O’Leary to take up a sales role with software company Meltwater News, in the media-monitoring area. “The software allowed companies to track what the media was saying about them. Back then the need for social-media monitoring was only beginning to emerge. Instagram and TikTok didn’t even exist.”
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After selling Meltwater News software for a couple of years, O’Leary’s next move could hardly have been more different. He became business development manager with Green 17, a management company for professional golfers. He describes most of the players involved as “journeymen pros” and there were few if any visits to winners’ enclosures during his time with the company. On the other, he had a great time. “It was a great experience,” he says.
However, the timing wasn’t brilliant. It was 2008, the beginning of the global financial crisis and the onset of the property and fiscal crash here at home. By the end of the year it was time to move on again and he had already been formulating his thoughts about where.
Providing a solution to a problem
“During 2008 I began to realise there was a gap in a market, which I know quite well,” he says. “People I had sold software to were coming back to me and saying it worked well but they had no time to use it. What they needed was a service and not just a product. I knew there was a market there. It was 2009 and Ireland was at the height of its economic woes, and nobody was funding start-ups – I realised it was time to set up a business to serve that need. I had no formal business experience and no business plan but I knew there was a problem and I knew how to solve it. That was the kernel for starting Olytico.”
One of best pieces of advice I ever got was to not focus on the things that don’t differentiate you. Focus on the one per cent that you can do better than everyone else
— Stephen O'Leary
Like most start-ups, success came slowly at first. “I was building a solution and it wasn’t very busy in the first year,” says O’Leary. “I had one client and very little revenue but I had loads of time. I knew if the business was to become a success I had to promote it. I had to get the story out there.”
He put his journalism skills to work on that. “I realised there was an appetite in the media for the stories I could produce based on the data I was collecting and the social listening I was doing,” he explains. “I began to produce reports like who was most talked about player during the Six Nations rugby championship. RTÉ ran with that one.”
Gaining global reach
The breakthrough moment came when Apple was launching its tablet product. “People all over the world were speculating about the name of the new product. I published piece of work on the most popular names being mentioned. Interestingly, the iPad was not number one with the public. The story was picked up by the BBC and news organisations around the world after that. It didn’t matter that it was coming from Stephen O’Leary sitting at his kitchen table in Dublin.”
With the Olytico brand gaining global reach, business began to gain pace. “The company was seen differently,” says O’Leary. “I saw things differently as well. Customers didn’t care about the size the company; they cared about the quality of the analysis work we did. I was very lucky to have the time to spend on the business-analysis reports, insights and so on to generate publicity for the company. That helped grow the company over the following years.”
Focus on differentiation
At the outset Olytico was using off-the-shelf technology to provide its service to customers. “Our role was to make sure it was used properly. Over time the team expanded and after a few years I realised we needed engineers as well as analysts. We started to develop small things which were not core to the product but could add real value to it.”
That has formed the basis of O’Leary’s strategy for the company over the past 10 years, he adds. “That’s what we come back to – not spending too much time on undifferentiated things. One of best pieces of advice I ever got was to not focus on the things that don’t differentiate you. Focus on the one per cent that you can do better than everyone else. That’s where you get the rewards and the profits. That has stood us in great stead. We now have 10 people serving clients in the global healthcare, FMCG, banking, and insurance sectors, among others.”
He is grateful for the support he received along the way. “There is no way I would be where I am if not for the support of others,” he says. “People like family and friends and the customers who chose us instead of bigger potential suppliers – that can be the difference between success and failure. If people are willing to take a risk on you as an entrepreneur you are much more likely to succeed.”
Joining Dublin Chamber as an SME
The desire to generate awareness of his fledgling company led O’Leary to Dublin Chamber very early in the company’s development. “The first time I came in contact with Dublin Chamber was back in 2009. Multiple people had told me I should join the chamber,” he recalls. “They told me about the great networking opportunities it offered and how it had regular events which would help me to help build the brand. I joined 14 years ago and have never looked back.”
He describes 2015 as the turning point for his involvement in the chamber. “I had been active in terms of attending events but Greg Clarke was president that year and he came from an SME background. He was keen to increase SME participation and I was effectively co-opted on to the council. It opened my eyes to what the council did. It was a great experience. There were the CEOs of some of Ireland’s biggest brands in the room and me from a five-person company at the time. It was a fascinating place to be. It was a great group to be part of and I made some fantastic connections.”
He also saw the importance of his own contribution. “I realised that what I brought as an SME owner and entrepreneur had real value for the chamber. I ran for re-election and was successful. I subsequently joined the board and was elected deputy vice-president three years ago.”
A year of possibility and opportunity
O’Leary is looking forward to the year ahead with excitement. “It’s filled with possibility and opportunity,” he says. “I have a lot of responsibilities as well, of course. It’s about working so that you provide a return to the people who placed their trust and faith in you to put you in this leadership position. I’m a big believer in legacy. You should always make sure you leave something in a better place than you found it where possible. I’m taking over from an excellent president in Vincent Harrison and my job now is to work hard to ensure that I leave presidency in an even better place for Siobhan O’Shea when she takes over next February.”
Entrepreneurship is top of his own agenda for his presidency. “I want to ensure that Dublin remains a great place for entrepreneurs with ideas to succeed. There are a lot of supports and organisations out there already to help entrepreneurs but I am calling on Government and others to look at ways that the support can be improved. I know the important role FDI plays in the economy and the record levels of tax it helps to produce.
Age is not a determining factor. If you are passionate about it and feel you can effect change, you should go for it
— Stephen O'Leary
“But indigenous business and entrepreneurs are key to employment and economic success across the country. In my speech to the chamber AGM in February my key ask was to reduce the Capital Gains Tax rate to 20 per cent in order to reward entrepreneurs for the risk they take when setting up a business.”
Tax isn’t the only issue of course. “Fundamental challenges exist in housing, transport and infrastructure,” he points out. “There is a talent battle and people need affordable places to live and to be able to travel to them from work. Affordable housing and good transport networks are critically important if we want to attract people to live and work in Dublin. If we can’t attract talent to the city it’s very hard for business to grow and flourish.”
The theme for his presidency is conversations. “It’s what I do in my day jobs. I listen to the public voice. I want to listen to our members and what they are saying. We can see all around us the benefits of listening and having good conversations. This year marks the 25th anniversary of the Belfast Good Friday Agreement. That agreement started with conversations and people talking to each other. Conversations are key to what Dublin Chamber does. It facilitates conversations between members, Government and other stakeholders. The more conversations we have, the better things get generally. We need more of them, and I want to see more events that bring people together to have those conversations.”
Fresh perspectives
O’Leary believes his relative youth has its advantages. “At the chamber AGM dinner, the Taoiseach noted that this was the first time he had addressed a chamber function where he was older than its president,” he says with a smile. “I think it’s good for the public to see an organisation like Dublin Chamber place its trust in someone relatively young. Age is not a determining factor. If you are passionate about it and feel you can effect change, you should go for it.”
People from different age groups can offer new perspectives as well. At a more extreme level he mentions his four and five-year-old daughters. “They ask questions non-stop. They are so interested in their city. But they see it entirely differently. It’s good to see it through a different lens than businesspeople and politicians. We need to stop and ask why things are the way they are in the city.”
His own perspective is heavily influenced by his early experiences as an entrepreneur. “I waited tables at the start. When I started Olytico I took on any freelance work I could find to pay the rent. Griffith College gave me opportunity to become a tutor and I was able to do a postgraduate programme in training and education. I went on to lecture on both the undergraduate and postgraduate courses in journalism. That was a great help in the early years of the business.
“It might be a cliche, but I learned a huge amount as well,” he adds. “Even though the students were just a few years younger than me, they saw the world in a different way. They used media in a different way. That teaches you to think about things in different ways. It was an amazing experience. I went on to become a fellow of the college as a result of an award I had won. I enjoyed teaching immensely. It might be something I return to at some point in the future.”
For now O’Leary is focused on his term as chamber president. “I am acutely aware of the fact that I am only a few weeks into my term as president,” he says. “I can see how big the opportunity is. It is really special. Even in the first few days as president the number of people who contacted me to meet and have conversations was amazing. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and I’m going to make the most of it.”