Stories
It is the 13th year of the Entrepreneur Experience and Larry O’Donoghue is taking a break in proceedings. He is two-thirds of the way through an intense 24 hours in Ballymaloe, Co Cork where 24 emerging entrepreneurs have been matched with 24 seasoned ones.
Despite heavy rains, everyone has made it to what is a unique event. This year’s event was led by two co-captains: Jim Barry of the Barry Group and Rena Maycock, the founder of Cilter.
The energy is hard to describe as emerging entrepreneurs like Harriet Treacy of BeyondBMI, Peigin Crowley of Ground Wellbeing and Markham Nolan of Noan mix with seasoned entrepreneurs like Brian Crowley of investment firm Broadlake, Grainne Kelly of BubbleBum and Mark Brosnan of GetVisibility.
There is also a mixture of long-term advisors to companies and entrepreneurs in attendance at the event, including Michael Neary of Grant Thornton and Colm Manning of William Fry.
“There have been about 260 companies who have gone through the programme at this stage,” Larry O’Donoghue, the chief executive of CorkBIC says. “We have a bank of about 100 seasoned entrepreneurs that step in and out depending on the early-stage companies that are selected.
“If there is a particular kind of expertise that a start-up needs, we try to match them with a seasoned entrepreneur who can really help.”
The Entrepreneur Experience has been going so long that there are some there who have gone from being fledgling entrepreneurs to having big exits. For example, Frank Madden, one of this year’s team leaders, got involved more than a decade ago, before selling his business Crest Solutions last year in a significant deal.
“We are incredibly fortunate with the calibre of entrepreneurs prepared to work with us,” O’Donoghue says. “We have people here with decades of experience, and we also have people much earlier on their journey. We think this mixture gives people the best range of experiences.”
Damien Kennedy, the founder of healthy treat maker Wheyhey, was for example first on the programme as an early-stage founder in 2019. Now he is the leader of a brand holding company called groceriX which develops, manufactures and markets healthy food that includes not just Wheyhey but also the very popular MyProtein brand.
“About six of the 24 seasoned entrepreneurs are here for the first time this year,” O’Donoghue said. “That’s a bit of a new thing. Traditionally there was a lot of daylight between the seasoned and emerging entrepreneurs, but based on feedback from attendees we have changed things.
“Now a lot of the experienced entrepreneurs are not 20 years ahead of the emerging ones, but they are five years ahead. For an earlier stage business, it may be more applicable for them to work with an entrepreneur who is not that far ahead of them.”
The Entrepreneur Experience is supported by Cork City Council as well as Cork County Council, but it attracts people from all over Ireland. “It is a national event,” O’Donoghue says. “There are strong Cork roots but we’ve entries from all over the country.”
It has also attracted experienced entrepreneurs and investors from overseas including Spain-based Asier Rufino, the chief executive of Tecnalia Ventures, and Julian Costley, a serial investor and chairman. “There is definitely a national element to the event, but it is also international. We have had startups from overseas here before, as well as bringing in seasoned entrepreneurs with experience of growing companies overseas,” O’Donoghue says.
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The Entrepreneur Experience is sector-agnostic and divided into three groups to reflect the different stages start-ups can occupy – from being just an early idea right up to a significant business with sales in the millions of euro and serious investors on board.
The network of entrepreneurs is extraordinary; so too is the trust between them. It is why seasoned entrepreneurs like Andrew O’Shaughnessy keep coming back. “There is nothing like this,” O’Shaughnessy tells me at one point. When I first met O’Shaughnessy in 2019, he was chair of the group I was in along with Ian Kehoe when we were trying to come up with ideas for the business that became The Currency. O’Shaughnessy was encouraging but also questioned why another business publication was needed. It forced us to focus and think about what we needed to do to make ourselves different.
The network of people we met at the Entrepreneur Experience has helped us numerous times over the last four years and exposed us to fresh ways of thinking. I wasn’t familiar with O’Shaughnessy before 2019, but it was inspiring hearing him tell the Poppulo story and sharing some of the lessons he had learned building that business. Two years later the Cork-based firm merged with US-based Four Winds Interactive to form a communications and office management software powerhouse worth a reported combined $1 billion.
Hearing him – and many others – share their insights into creating a business culture and scaling was invaluable. O’Donoghue said a secret to the Entrepreneur Experience’s success was its ability to expose entrepreneurs to people outside their networks and get them to think about their businesses and share their ambitions and fears.
“There is something very unique about this event,” O’Donoghue said. “It’s not necessarily what people expect. There are similarities to what other people do, but spending 24 hours together allows people to develop a trust and openness to help each other. It is transformational in a short space of time.
“If you talk to the returning entrepreneurs, they are still talking about what they learned and the friends they made. The right piece of advice at the right time can make a huge impact. I’d like to think that trust, openness and advice is why the Entrepreneur Experience can make a difference when start-ups need it most.”
The Currency is the media partner for the Entrepreneur Experience event. Other CorkBIC event partners are Cork City Council, Cork County Council, Grant Thornton, Broadlake and William Fry.
