I first met Karen O’Neill when we were in the early development stage of The Currency. In fact, it was not even called The Currency at the time. It was not called anything. Tom and I had a concept and an idea for a different form of online publisher, but we were struggling to articulate our vision. 

Pete Smyth, the ever-optimistic and supportive head of the investment vehicle Broadlake, put us in touch with Karen and arranged a meeting. The idea was to scope out our brand values and our identity. As journalists, we were sceptical. But it was a thoroughly positive experience; we were challenged on our ideas and our market position.

Karen had worked in senior brand and marketing roles with the likes of Heineken and Pepsi. She knew what she was talking about. However, when we met, she, like ourselves, was in the process of setting up her own business from scratch.  

She started her own company, Beekon Batches, and began manufacturing at a small scale a fermented honey alcohol drink that she called a “honey refresher”.

The alcohol industry is notoriously difficult to break into. But Karen felt that she had the product to make inroads. And she was not alone in her belief. 

Last year, she raised €320,000 in total from Enterprise Ireland and others, after bootstrapping the business to the tune of €200,000 in the early years. It even got its first order from Bahrain.

Last week, however, Karen posted an emotional article on LinkedIn announcing she was walking away from the brand. In it, she wrote: 

“Today, I’m hitting pause. I don’t have the heart to say I’m ending. My hope is that an industry player with heart and vision will see the magic in the honest, authentic brand that was created and will have the foresight to help me finish what I started. I entered this process as a marketer with global experience. I leave it a better person.”

Rosanna, who had previously interviewed Karen for our weekly podcast, reached out to her in the aftermath of the post. She immediately responded and gave further insight into her decision to call it quits – for now.

Start-up culture can often be bombastic; founders talk about success but rarely failure. And that is what made Karen’s public statements so profound and so important. She spoke from her heart, and explained her rationale.

It showed immense strength and integrity. After all, as she disclosed to Rosanna, she opted not to spend any of the external funds she raised as she felt it might be the wrong thing to do. Instead, investors will get back every single cent. 

“I self-funded everything up until November, so the money is new. I hadn’t really started to spend it. The house of cards started coming down in December. I couldn’t fix it over the last couple of months. So, the money is still there,” she told Rosanna.

O’Neill’s honesty was startling. “In one way. It’s a massive relief. I get my life back,” O’Neill said. “Then in another way, there’s a professional death inside me that I have to have to deal with. 

“I was so close at so many junctures but never actually getting to where I needed to go. I was constantly triaging, at no point getting into the flow.”

Karen’s business struggled from a number of issues that would legitimately be described as acts of God – from exploding cans to label issues to changing US legislation. However, she dealt with them as best she could and kept on battling. When the time to call it quits occurred, she dealt with it positively also. 

Karen is one of the few talking about the struggles of business, but she is far from the only one. According to the latest date from PWC, there was a 23 per cent increase in the total number of insolvencies when comparing Q1 2022 and Q1 2023. In crude terms, 119 companies failed in the first quarter of 2023 compared to 97 companies in Q1 2022.

In Q1 2023, the arts, entertainment and recreation sector had the highest number of business failures with 21 failures per 10,000 businesses.

And we can expect more liquidations in the coming months also as companies adapt to high interest rates, and when they must pay back warehoused tax debt.

We should always celebrate success but we need to respect the other side of the coin. People try. People fail. That does not make them failures. It makes them entrepreneurs. And the fact that someone like Karen can speak about it is all the more impressive.

As Stephen remarked on Twitter: “So much of the business press is ra-ra-ra, we raised this, announcing more of that, expanding into the other. You don’t see as many stories like this, about ‘professional death’. Bravo Karen O’Neill.”

Let’s give the last word to Karen: “Whatever value I had to bring before this journey, it’s tenfold since I started Beekon. I’ve learned so much and ironically, after everything, I still have the entrepreneurial itch.”

Kennedy Wilson’s Irish head office at 94 St Stephen’s Green.

Elsewhere last week, we published a massive three-part series by Thomas into Kennedy Wilson, the US property investor who has built up extensive commercial and residential property interests in Ireland over the past decade.

The first part of the investigation explored all the residential properties Kennedy Wilson has bought, built and sold here, for how much and with whom. Part two focused on its commercial property investments, while Thomas interviewed the boss of the firm’s Irish business in the final part of the series. It is a serious body of work, and crucial reading for anyone involved in property. 

Friday marked the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement. To mark it, Tommie Gorman wrote a poignant piece about the nature of peace.

Stephen wrote a brilliant column on what Sinn Féin might do in government. His headline captured it perfectly: “Sinn Féin can campaign in tweets. But it will have to govern in Excel.” Stephen argued that the structure of the economy is clearly deeply dependent on the claims of very few but very powerful companies, but that it is also clear that Sinn Féin has absolutely no intention of altering the underlying structure of the Irish economy. 

The column came on the back of new Exchequer numbers showing yet another month of bumper corporation tax receipts. In an exclusive, Thomas explained what company had paid the money. He will have more on this in the coming days.

The neurodiverse have strengths that neurotypical people do not. It would benefit companies and society if they were better integrated. That was the point made by our new columnist Stuart Fitzgerald in his first column last week. 

Godfrey Deeny is at the top of his game, a fashion editor who has had a seat in textile’s trenches for three decades. He talked to Rosanna about the enduring art of critique, greenwashing and LVMH’s new strategy.