My journey into the world of entrepreneurship...

My background

Like many other entrepreneurs I've taken a very roundabout route to building and launching tech companies over the last 15+ years and across 3 continents.

Having spent my youth in Brussels and going to school at the European School, I decided to return to my roots in Dublin to study Economics at UCD. Like most kids in the 90's. I didn't have a clue what I wanted to do with my life and career if I couldn't be a football player. After UCD I went on to do a Masters in Financial Economics at KU Leuven in Belgium, studying under the legendary Piet Sercu. I somehow managed to get through that course given that the 2002 World Cup was right smack in the middle of my exams, it was one of the few World Cups that Ireland have got to and Roy Keane had been forced out of the Irish squad before the tournament by Mick McCarthy.

After my masters I travelled the world with my mates before settling down to a career in investment banking and finance, or so I thought. I started as a fund trader in Bank of Ireland before completing another Masters, this time in Management and Organisation Studies at UCD Smurfit Graduate School of Business. I then worked for Davy in the Corporate Finance team on private company placements, M&A deals and IPO's.

Then one day I got a call from my best friend Niall. who was working on Paul Allen's Superyacht as a chef. He was uploading videos of himself cooking dishes on the yacht to YouTube and getting hundreds of thousands of views (this was in the early days of YouTube!). Anyway, he asked me if I would build a business with him that taught people how to cook with videos online and that seemed like a complete no-brainer.

That first business was called iFoods and we raised some money, we shot a bunch of very stylish cooking videos, we built a platform for foodies to watch those videos and connect (because Web 2.0 was all the rage back then), we got some great PR (like appearing on the UK Dragons Den and being named by Apple as one of the top apps for the iPhone)...but we ultimately failed. That was a great lesson in having a great idea, great traction and looking great from the outside but not having a real business model that could scale.

Fast forward 15 or so years and I've built and launched products that have been used by over 30 million people around the world, partnered with some of the biggest names in tech, entertainment and sports and bought and sold multiple companies in multi-million dollar deals. No matter what, I still get incredibly excited about building, working on or investing in great products with incredible founders in exciting markets, so if that's you or your startup...let's talk!