Its clients range from London-based commodities trading giant Glencore listed Irish firms Aer Lingus and Applegreen. Further afield, it works with Cameroon’s national power company Eneo and Swiss building materials company LafargeHolcim, a giant corporation that employs over 70,000 people worldwide.

Richard Wall and Simon Kelly have grown their regtech business Emex to having recurring revenue of €1 million a year. Now they are working with investment advisors Blackbee to raise €4 million to invest in their business using EIIS finance, a state-supported tax relief scheme to encourage private individuals to back companies. This is the story of their business and the origins of its two founders.

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Richard Wall, a former management consultant, and Simon Kelly, a former property developer, co-founded Emex in 2010. It is a fast-growing business with €1 million in recurring revenue. At its simplest, Emex lets companies manage their risk and engage with their employees digitally to improve overall safety.

Individual staff feed into Emex’s mobile app what issues they are facing in, for example, mines, industrial plants or construction sites. If companies can understand the risks employees are facing, they can then reduce the potential for accidents.

Simon Kelly is in his home in Wicklow when we talk on the phone about his new venture. He’s been all over the world building up Emex in the years since he was a high-profile boomtime developer.

Improving safety is big business, and it has taken him to some exotic locales.

I ask him about working with Kaz Minerals, a copper miner in Kazakhstan, that is listed in London with a market capitalisation of £2 billion. “It is a country that has huge mineral wealth and is very ambitious,” Kelly said. “They are building their own version of Dubai and turning out bright shiny cities. Visiting there really changes your perspective.”

Lagos in Nigeria, he said, was his favourite city to visit since cofounding Emex. “It is far less comfortable than Dublin but it has great energy,” he said.

“The business plans to grow its annual sales to more than €20 million over the next four years.”

Simon Kelly

Cameroon, Kenya, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Russia, the Middle East and various Stans were among the places Kelly and Wall have visited. “We have travelled extensively globally to win customers,” he said.

“This strategy has given us the opportunity to fully develop the product, and execute complex deployments with very large clients in oil and gas, and the extractive industries,” Kelly said.

The next phase of Emex, he said, was America. “This round of finance will allow the company to grow its client base and establish its sales and marketing hub on the West Coast, USA,” Kelly said. “The business plans to grow its annual sales to more than €20 million over the next four years.”

For example, Kelly said Emex was in talks with a second big exploration company in Kazakhstan, but there was a limited number of companies to talk to there versus the United States. “America has 1000s of potential clients. There is a much deeper pool of people there who might need us.”

Emex also hopes to use the funding round to deepen its relationships with existing clients.

Ikea in the Middle East is using its products, but there are only about half a dozen in the region, versus over 300 of the flatpack furniture retailers worldwide. Glencore has over 160,000 employees and contractors worldwide, but Emex is only working with a relatively small number of them. “There is huge potential to grow by deepening the relationships with our existing customers,” Kelly said.

The pandemic makes regtech more important. “Covid-19 has created new demand for safety software in traditionally low-risk office-based businesses like banking and insurance),” Kelly explained.

“Many of these companies have a large number of employees but have no capacity to manage and record the regulatory information regarding this.”

“We see this new sector expanding and we have an excellent use case currently working with a large insurance company in Ireland.”

Emex has engaged David O’Shea, the chief executive of Blackbee, to help it. Kelly has raised big money since 2018 working with O’Shea to invest in commercial property deals, so they both know each other well. (See panel)

“Based on Harvard research, the safest companies in the world are also the best run companies and this is now reflected in the value of the business, and the cost of debt,” Kelly said. 

“The globalization of capital markets has also globalized regulations and standards, and this is forcing more and more companies to improve their safety and environmental standards.”

“Private equity investors highly value safety data, and it’s a regulated requirement from stock markets around the globe,” Kelly added. “The consumer now also demands transparency from the supply chains of the global giants like Apple, BMW etc and these suppliers can only prove the validity of their data with software like Emex.”

“Workplace safety is a rapidly growing segment of the enterprise software market and it is estimated to grow from $5.3 billion to $8.6 billion over the next four years,” Kelly said.

“Covid-19 has highlighted the dangers of the workplace and changed forever the obligation on employers to ensure that work is safe.”

Shared ideas and passion

Simon Kelly first developed an interest in computers in 1982 when he was 12 years old. He’d just had his teeth taken out which in those days required a three-night stay in hospital, so his mother offered to buy him a present. “I had been thinking about owning a computer for a few months at this point, but was too nervous to ask – and this was my chance,” Kelly recalled.

“I asked for a computer and my mum said yes! It was a Sinclair ZX Spectrum and I used to spend hours and hours writing software code in my room. In my mind, I was already building a massive software company to rival Microsoft.”

Kelly’s interests in computers led to him making spreadsheets to help his father Paddy manage his business taking him into property development.

Emex, he said, was a return to his first love. A mutual business friend had introduced him to Richard Wall.

“I immediately knew we had the same ideas, drive, and passion. Richard comes from a background with Accenture where he was trained and immersed in large enterprise business computing,” Kelly said.

“We decided in that first meeting to start working together and build an ambitious software business which is now Emex.”

Wall is based in Switzerland while Kelly lives in Ireland. The two men believe they complement each other’s skillset.

“I believe we can be a massively open economy attracting capital and skills and exporting digital added-value products onwards to the world.”

Simon Kelly

“Richard brings a big company discipline and outlook that he gained from working with Accenture and its clients,” Kelly said. “He is very focused on the automation of business processes and the value that this can bring to clients.”

“It is also a people and talent business, and Richard is completely is focused on our culture as part of our competitive edge.

“I bring a finance, scale, and ambition perspective to the business. I know from my previous business experience what is needed to drive and expand any business,” Kelly said.

“Competing in software is all about communication, sales, and marketing, and this is a skill that I really understand.”

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Richard Wall takes up the story via email. The chief executive of Emex studied commerce in UCD before joining Arthur Anderson, later acquired by Accenture, as an accountant and then a consultant.

“Through this, I got to travel to all over the world designing and implementing business solutions for large companies,” Wall said. “This taught me about the power of big software companies like Oracle and SAP, but it also gave me insights into the underserved sectors, which included workplace safety and risk management. I always knew that I wanted to run my own business, and linking up with Simon gave me the platform to go for it.”

“I am really excited about the project of building Emex and I love the challenge. Building a software company to compete in the global marketplace is not like any other business undertaking. We battle on a daily basis with other software companies from every corner of the world.

“The work involved in building a company like this is endless and that’s what attracts me to it,” he explained.

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‘Ireland can become a mini Hong Kong’

In 2010 Simon Kelly published a book called ‘Breakfast with Anglo’ depicting his years as a developer during the property bubble. The book told how he and his father Paddy Kelly ended up borrowing more than €1 billion along with other people to invest in property through various syndicates.

The book described how his family steadily built a property empire in Europe and North America from the 1970s on before losing control of it all by borrowing too much in the final frenzied years of the property bubble.

The Kelly family is best known in Dublin for helping to develop the Smithfield area just North of the Liffey, and the family went on to have stakes in a raft of hotels and resorts. Their biggest plan was a $2 billion development in Sarasota, Florida, but they were involved in all sorts of things from an Italian ski resort in Prageleto to a stake in the fashion chain Mango. 

Simon Kelly’s book is a cautionary tale that acknowledges that while no individual could be blamed for everything, he was as a significant developer “partially responsible” for what happened. It is full of all sorts of stories from the lure of betting on CFDs to bumping into former Anglo chairman Sean FitzPatrick and being offered a stake in a Nigerian oil well.

At the time the book was published there was a rawness to it.

At the start of the book, Kelly admits he feared he might go bankrupt. In 2010 there weren’t that many of his peers in property ready to admit that so openly.

Simon Kelly did not, in the end, go bankrupt.

He and his father instead eventually exited the National Asset Management Agency after the state property bank sold the last of their debts to various overseas funds a few years ago. 

The fact the Kellys were allowed leave indicates that whatever about how much they borrowed in the boom, Nama was happy in the bust that they had cooperated in dealing with their debts.

Prior to his interview, Kelly had said while he would answer any question, he would like to talk about the future more than the past.

This was not unreasonable, as between court cases, a book, and media reports there has been a lot written about the impact of the financial crash on the Kelly family.

However, given the current economic crisis, it is impossible not to ask him how did the last time compare with today. It is a question Kelly gives some consideration to.

This time, he said, he felt was “radically different” to last. “Looking back at 2008, Ireland from a financial perspective was a much more simplistic and closed economy. The business sector was dominated by property and it was financed by a limited number of banks  – all of which went broke.”

The growth he said was financed by a “credit bubble,” and when this burst it took everything with it.

“The iPhone had only just been released, and the new digital economy was only in its infancy,” he added. “The working population up to 2008 was increasing but this was principally being driven by jobs which we all connected to the domestic economy and the credit cycle. The focus on the leveraged construction and property sector made the economy very vulnerable to a financial shock which is exactly what we got in 2008.”

Kelly said it took until 2013 for the economy to have recovered enough to expand again. This time he said Ireland was in a different position.

“Now in 2020 Ireland is a large and essential component of the global supply chain for digital goods and pharma. The demand drivers in the economy are these FDI jobs, and these are the locomotive that’s pulling the whole economy along,” he said.

“With these stronger growth drivers, the wider economy is now financed by a completely different range of financial institutions all of which are international in nature. Banks such as Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and many other international players are the backbone of the lending system, supporting an ecosystem of smaller B2B lenders.

“Sometimes in Ireland, we are too quick to believe in our own doom.”

Simon Kelly

“So unlike 2008, the strength of the Irish economy is not being threatened by the locomotive part of the economy or the financial system. Covid-19 is clearly a big economic shock but the 2020 economy is far better prepared for shocks like this, and we now have the flexibility and agility to recover and adjust like other diverse and developed economies,” he argued.

“The recovery here will also be supported by massive Central Bank and State interventions to support demand which will help to finance the recovery.  I think Covid-19 from an economic perspective will affect limited parts of the economy (very badly), but that the overall economy will grow again very rapidly as we pivot further and further into digital services and exports.

“Ireland can become a mini Hong Kong acting as a trading hub between the USA and the EU. I believe we can be a massively open economy attracting capital and skills and exporting digital added-value products onwards to the world.”

What did you learn from the last crash, that is helping you get through this one? “The 2008 – 2013 crash and subsequent economic depression was a massive learning curve. Since then, I have completely globalized my outlook on business and the products and services that I want my businesses to provide,” Kelly said.

“A single sector or market risk for your product can feel great in the good times like Dublin Property circa 2000 to 2007, but brutally expose you in the bad times. This pushes my whole business perspective to the internet where companies get to compete and trade with the world – rather than a local business in Dublin with 100 per cent exposure to the local economy.

“Trading with the world is now far easier if your product is software or digital like Emex. This is real borderless and frictionless trade. Risk management is also a central part of all of my business thinking – and this is part of the reason I see a massive future for Emex – which manages risk for clients,” he added.

“I have essentially rethought and planned my whole approach to business prompted by the 2008 crash. The enemies of success like leverage and poor risk management are front and centre in my mind as well as the hubris and ego that accompanied the old property industry.”

“2008 also taught me that recovery can catch you out and that it’s easily missed,” he said. “Sometimes in Ireland, we are too quick to believe in our own doom. We are a great country, full of amazing people and entrepreneurs and this will secure the recovery from this crisis and the future of Ireland. The best is firmly ahead of us.”

‘His low point was perhaps being reduced to journalism’

From crisscrossing the world, the founders of Emex have been based at home since Covid-19. Simon Kelly is in Wicklow, while Richard Wall is in Vaud, a district in West Switzerland bordering lake Geneva. Wall lived in Ireland until 201o. Kelly said as a result of the distance between these two locations, working remotely has not impacted Emex. “We were on Microsoft Teams since it was launched in 2017,” he laughs.

While not good for anyone, he said Covid-19 did represent opportunities as companies sought to reduce their costs such as insurance premiums. “Businesses face into another massive round of insurance premium hikes prompted by the Covid-19 cost,” he said. “The cost of claims must ultimately be borne through future premiums, and insurance costs in Ireland and globally are set to rise and rise.”

“Software like Emex gives companies the tools and data to understand their operational risk, and their historic cost and performance,” he added. “Companies can build future forecast models based on this. They also need this data to know how much insurance they require, and how much risk they should take on directly.

“The connection between insurance premiums and safety performance is explicit and the insurance industry is set to be disrupted by a range of innovative software companies like Emex.”

Emex, he said, had launched a Covid-19 solution, to help businesses manage risks associated with the return to work.

There was a point before the financial crash 12 years ago when Simon Kelly was by any measure wealthy. His low point was perhaps being reduced to journalism as a columnist with the now-defunct The Sunday Tribune.

But Kelly has an irrepressibility and optimism that got him through the crash, to come out the other side. He is confident in his new venture’s prospects.

“We want Emex to grow into a really great software business. Richard and I as founders are committed to building an excellent Irish company to compete with the best in the world” Kelly said.

“Safety software is going through the same transformation today that we saw in accountancy software in the 1980s. It started as a tool for large companies but is now a must-have for all companies.  Everybody from the corner shop to Amazon and Facebook,” Wall said.

“Marc Andreessen wrote that ‘software is eating the world’ in a 2011 essay. He forecast that software companies would take over everything and we see that today with Amazon in retail and Tesla in Cars. If you don’t want to be eaten, you need to be in the software business and that’s why I am building Emex with Richard,” Kelly concluded.