Surround Yourself with People You Trust

There’s a reason why entrepreneurs and business leaders are always emphasizing the importance of networking, because it actually works!

Today we’re meeting an entrepreneur who by leaning into his own experience and leveraging his network has secured support and investment for his digital start up. We hear how his personal motivation for the business has made him secure in his decisions, but how he has also learned the hard way to balance passion and personal life.

Our guest has over 10 years’ experience in software integration and is using this to build a technology solution to make the online world more inclusive. It’s a pleasure to welcome Founder of Nexus Inclusion, Kyran O’Mahoney.

https://ie.linkedin.com/in/kyrano

https://www.nexusinclusion.com/

For your convenience, we include an automated AI transcription.

Larissa Feeney  0:00

With over 10 years experience in software integration projects, we’re about to hear how one company is making the internet more inclusive, one web page at a time.

Kyran O’Mahoney  0:09

We only started writing code from December of last year, so to get to market in May is incredible.

Voiceover  0:14

No unicorns, No brands. Just hard working people who built their business from the ground up, sharing their experience so others can learn. Presented by Larissa Feeney from Kinore. This is Real Business Conversations.

Larissa Feeney  0:33

Hello. My name is Larissa Feeney. I am CEO and founder at Kinore Finance and Business Services. Today we’re meeting an entrepreneur who is building the technology solution to make the world more inclusive. A lot of the best businesses are built off a personal passion, and our guest has a mission to help people like him with accessibility online. It’s a pleasure to welcome founder of Nexus inclusion. Kyran O’Mahoney

Kyran O’Mahoney 1:01

Thank you so much. Great to be here.

Larissa Feeney  1:03

Great to have you. Kyron, maybe start, well, maybe start at the beginning. Tell me a little bit about yourself and your background.

Kyran O’Mahoney  1:12

So obviously, my name is Kyran O’Mahoney. I’ve, I’ve recently founded a company called Nexus inclusion, but it actually came out of a kind of a long journey in in the corporate world to kind of get to this point. I grew up in Ireland with a visual impairment, so I have maybe about 17% of normal vision, so I’d be on the legally blind spectrum. But as you know, I can see a lot of things, and I really, really struggled through school, and I always thought personally, like I wasn’t able for subjects, and I really pushed myself to do honors, but suffered really severe eye strain, etc, etc. Then, you know, went into secondary school. The same thing again. Sorry, in secondary school it was, it was exactly the same thing as I went into college, though I accidentally. Now I say I fell into a computer science degree. I wanted to be a physiotherapist. Thankfully, that didn’t happen, because I would have made a terrible physiotherapist, and I was literally on my very first day in college. And if you remember back when computers were huge, big white boxes, I couldn’t see where the on button was, so I had to ask the person beside me, how do I turn this computer on? So just give you some perspective of where I came from in terms of computer science, and as soon as I hit that button, my world changed. And quite literally, I went from someone that was always sitting at the bottom of the class to gradually coming open, became the person in the class that people were asking for advice of. And the reason for that is because the first time ever I could increase the size of the font, I could buy a bigger screen. You know, all of these things became like enablers for me. So anyway, I got my degree and then announced to my parents that I was going to go off and work in copper face jacks for 11 years. So I ended up DJing for many, many years. But eventually I got into, I got back into, into the role of technology, and I worked in numerous companies in Ireland, from AIB to Ryanair to, you know, done stores and I want I remember distinctly one day about kind of seven or eight years ago, I was sitting in a meeting, and I’d gone from always trying to be or stressed about trying to get the biggest screen, or being worried about an employer giving me the biggest screen, or whatever the case may be, and I was sitting in meeting room with a 13 inch laptop, and occur To me is I haven’t thought about my disability in quite a while, and it was, it was almost like a, you know, this light bulb moment where I was like, I just see technology as this huge enabler for me. Now, it’s not a situation where I get worried about, you know, how I travel around, or how I get from A to B. I quite literally use my iPhone every day to commute, you know, to see the numbers on busses and things like that. And one of the stories I love is that every night, when I read my little girl her bedtime story, I use my microfire on my iPhone to read it, you know. So technology, to me, is just being this huge enabler. So I knew there was something there, you know, there’s something there’s something in that, and I wanted to bring it to scale. And as you look into our sector that I’m in now, you know, most people will refer to as the accessibility sector, you know, and there’s a there’s a huge amount of nonprofit people who are huge, hugely passionate in that, and I worked for for one of them for a period of time as well. But there’s always this aspiration to become accessible, and I don’t think that’s the right approach. So why I decided to go down the Nexus inclusion road as a company is that I wanted to say that accessibility is the lowest entry point, inclusion and making everyone feel that they have that enablement there is what the real goal should be. And for me, the game changer really was generative, AI, so after being a technologist for many, many years, it’s difficult to do accessibility. It just it is because it’s different for every people. Every person, sorry, and I always use this thermo, you know, even with my little girl, I always say, you know, we’re all unique. Everyone’s unique. Everyone uses technology slightly differently. And that means that, ultimately. The accessibility for websites or accessibility for mobile applications, everyone uses them slightly differently, and they can’t that context is missing. But what’s the one thing that AI and technology do wonderfully well together is context. So I quite literally offer a glass of wine one weekend with my wife, and I was talking about it, and I says, I think this could be huge. I think this could be a business that could scale from a marketing perspective, when I’m talking to potential investors and things like that, I say our market is quite literally anyone with a website, if you’ve got a website, you can, you can be a customer of ours. But the reality for me is that any customer that we sign up to our solution makes the world better and makes the world more equal. And I love that. I love that, that that approach to things, and I think I’m very lucky to be in a position now where I’m running a company that does have an ambition to go global, but also you get to feel quite good about what you’re doing. And that’s, that’s that’s precious, and I’m really proud of where we are,

Larissa Feeney  6:02

because you’re making a difference Exactly, yeah, you know, to a person, to an individual. So maybe help me understand, then what happens? What? So you talked about context and accessibility and generative AI, so talk to me, if I’m a user of your product, then what would I use it for

Kyran O’Mahoney  6:22

sure? So actually, maybe if I step one one point back and say, why would you use it? The reality is, is that if you look at the top 1 million websites in the world, less than 4% of them work for people with disabilities. But if you look at the number of people globally who, who would state they have a disability? You’re looking at, what about 1.51 point 6, billion people, billion people, billion people. Would it be? Wow, yeah. So if you take that even a step further, is that in your family circle, I’m sure you know someone that needs help using technology, and I don’t mean that they have a disability, I mean possibly they might have a neurological issue, or they might be young, or they might be old, or they might have a temporary motor issue, or maybe they broke the risk, you know, so the latest research tells us that one in four people need help, like 25% using technology. What I think is, if you were talk to any commercial manager that’s out there, or any CFO, or any Chief Operating Officer, or anyone that’s responsible for conversion on a website, and we said to them, we can increase your potential acquisition rate by 25% they’ll jump. Yeah. I mean, it’s a no brainer. So that’s the commercial piece. The second piece is, why would we do it? Well, there’s the European Accessibility Act that’s coming online this year, and if your listeners aren’t aware of that, in June of this year, by the end of June, the European Accessibility Act will come into force across Europe, which effectively states that any digital product now I’m simplifying a bit, right, but it effectively states that any digital products, or websites, mobile applications, Even ATMs and things like that will need to be fully accessible to people with disabilities and follow a very specific standard to hit that accessibility, and if not, you potentially open to litigation. So I kind of say from a commercial standpoint, for us, this is like the GDP or for the digital accessibility world or the accessibility world. But again, what Nexus inclusion does is we see that as the starting point, the start of the journey. We’re actually going to, you know, work with people to make good, inclusive experiences. So what our company does then is that a lot of a lot of people are competitors, let’s say in the digital accessibility space, will spend a lot of time finding issues, what’s what’s wrong, what’s broken, you know? And it always, it always came across to me as very finger pointy. If I look at a website, oh, it’s not accessible. No, no, it’s not accessible. Well, okay, that’s great. That’s that’s a great first step to identify that there’s problem. But how do you fix that problem? How do you make it not only compliant with the legislation that’s coming in, but how do you make that a really good, user inclusive experience. So when people engage with your brand or they engage with your website, they get that kind of moment ago, oh, I wasn’t expecting this to work because I use a screen reader, or because I use magnification, or because maybe, you know, I just assumed the video wouldn’t have subtitles, and a lot of those basic things that some of us take for take for granted, it will just work. So our solution effectively defines the issue, but that’s like 5% of the problem. But what we do is we spend a lot of time then looking at how we can offer an inclusive solution for people, and our SaaS solution is built on that contextual element. So, so how would it work well for someone with a visual impairment? How would it work well with someone auditory or a perceivable issue or an operational, operable issue? And that’s what we really focus on. So our solution focuses on not only finding the problem, but giving really good advice around user experience. So we go right down to the code level, but we also go to the product owner level, or. The executive level, or, you know, it, let’s say, for the SME that’s out there, they don’t really want to have a team of people working on this, so we give them the tools to make them actionable in a very easy manner and create that good experience, and then ultimately, of course, be compliant with the legislation as well, which is, which is equally important. So that’s, that’s what we’re doing. We’re hoping to be alive with our first instance about mid May of this year. Yeah, it’s all hands on deck. We actually reviewed our coincidentally today as one of the end of our development cycles called sprints. And I actually got goosebumps. I was so excited about the what the team have have been building. And we’ve got a great team behind us. We’ve got some some great people working with us

Larissa Feeney  10:38

too. That sounds really exciting. It really does. It sounds amazing. So maybe talk to me about the team you have then, and it is pre revenue. So are your team internal, or have you outsourced the development?

Kyran O’Mahoney  10:51

Yeah, it’s a mixture of both. From a leadership perspective, our chief operating officer is a former IT director from Reiner. So really good. You know, commercial technology experience. We have our head of accessibility and inclusion is the former user experience lead from from Bank of Ireland. So we’ve been really lucky in getting some, some some really experienced people on board. Some of them have invested as well in the company, which is wonderful. And then from in terms of internal staff, we’ve, we’ve six internal staff at the moment. We’re hoping to grow to about 12 over the course of 2025, as we as we get ready for launch. And then every everyone else is is outsourced at the moment. So one of the areas of, you know, being a technologist, for so long we’ve been, I’ve been in position to build up, you know, relationships of many, you know, outsourcing companies that are that I would know and trust. So it was great to be able to bring them on board again and partner with them, because I know they know what I’m like to work with, and I know what my expectations around delivery are. So we’ve done really well in terms of a lot of those negotiations. And listen, it’s developed. Developers are expensive. There’s no other way around it, you know, and particularly when you have a team of 20 developers, you know, you really have to, you have to be careful with money. And it’s actually something, you know, my experience working as someone that’s self employed or running a business before, and again, it’s why I think the holistic offering from cloro is so important, is that you have to watch the pennies, you know. You have to be, you know, fully cognizant. What’s your cash flow now? What’s it running to and particularly with us, you know, we are free revenue. So everything we spend is is shortening our burn rate, you know, or shortening our time. So our entire focus at the moment is product, product, product. But that’s the that’s the most costly part of what we’re doing until we start to go to market. So thankfully for us, it’s a shorter it’s a shorter period than a lot of technology startups. I mean, we only started writing code from December of last year, you know. So to get to market in May is incredible, but it

Larissa Feeney  12:46

is incredible. It’s very, very fast. And what? Why are you able to do that so fast? And Karen, what is it because of your expertise that you’re able to drive it faster? Given your background, I

Kyran O’Mahoney  12:57

think it’s more like the I’ve learned the hard way through other projects, you know, and the risk that I’ve taken here is bring on more people to deliver faster and become, you know, get revenue in. But a lot of startups, I mean, I mean, we’re very lucky in that our funding round went really, really well, but I would talk about numbers, but, like we certainly, we certainly did better than I had anticipated. And I think a lot of it, a lot of people that decided to back us were very much in a position where they got it, you know, they saw the commercial potential here, you know. And I don’t, I don’t see us as an Irish based company. I see us as a broader company. And I remember even talking to one of the, one of the bigger investors, at one point, he’s gone. We need to make sure that you’ve got the level of cash that you need to bring in get this to market as quickly as possible. So my point to him is that, you know, what I’ll leverage on then is that I leverage my expertise. I leverage the our chief operating officers expertise at, you know, negotiating supplier contracts and things like that. But we’re in a position there to get incredible value for the developers that we have. Also we’re product, product, product. And in fact, this is literally the very first piece of external, I suppose, marketing, that we’ve done. We haven’t spoken about what we’re building at all like. So this is, this is still we

Larissa Feeney  14:11

have exclusivity here. I’m delighted. Well, that sounds it sounds amazing, but you’ve made a really good point, and I just want to pick you up on it, because it’s something that the vast majority of entrepreneurs, well, speaking for myself and for a lot of us that I know struggle with you know you’ve said it, you’ve you’ve gone hard at this, right? You’ve raised the money, and you’ve hired aggressively to get it to market by May. The temptation is to do with slower, I think, or to do it cheaper, or to have less people, and to maybe overestimate what you can do, or maybe, you know, hope you want to get to market by May, but knowing realistically that you don’t have the team to do it, so you seem to have done it the right way, because I’m guessing that you probably have competitors who are probably doing the same. Same thing or at an earlier stage, and there’s a, you know, there’s a timeline here. You have to get to the market as quickly

Kyran O’Mahoney  15:05

as you can, yeah, and like, this is a competitive marketplace, you know, and it’s certainly, it’s certainly with people that have realized that there’s a gap in the market here, particularly with the European Accessibility Act coming online. And we do watch, like, there, Ireland has a great culture of innovation and technology, and there’s other companies out there that have, have begun to pop up, you know. And I always say competition is is great, but that does mean that you have to get to market. We’re not actively looking for funding at the moment. The only thing we’re doing is focused on product. And the gamble that we’ve taken is, let’s, like you’re saying, Let’s build a team in get this out to a point that, you know, allow us to be in the market and establish as quickly as possible. Now, to do that, you know, you do need a level of expertise, from product development, from technology, from, you know, from marketing, but we’re lucky that we’ve kind of, when I say lucky, I’ve basically plagued people that I’ve worked with for many, many years to come on board. And I think I got some advice at the start of 2024, when I was originally toying, but what’s my next step? What’s my next step? And the piece of, piece of advice that I got, that I really ran with, and it’s paid out to be so valuable, is that surround yourself with the people that you trust and the people that you believe in. And that’s what I did. And when I explained my idea, and I sat down and said, Listen, you know, I know we work together, and here’s my idea, would you like to be involved and come back and come back to me about how you you would like that to be? And thankfully, you know, we even have a team of advisors that have just people that I know and respect and and have said, Okay, here’s how you do this, and here’s how I approach that one. And there is, there’s huge amounts of support out there in Ireland, but I think I’ve been working in in tech for so long now that, you know, having that network around me is great, you know.

Larissa Feeney  16:47

Yeah, that’s just what I was going to say. You’ve really drawn on that network, haven’t you?

Kyran O’Mahoney  16:51

Oh, 100% so, you know. And even it was a funny situation when we went, when we originally, because we, only kicked off, like, formally, late last year, as I was talking to so many people and saying, and you go through this, and I’m sure every, every entrepreneur or startup or founders out there, they have the idea, and then it’s, oh, my god, how am I gonna pay for it? You know? Yeah, you know. And that’s, that’s really it. And then you might have a co founder, you might have, maybe you might bring on a friend that’s the CTO or or someone else can access the CEO, and you think you can make it happen. And I really think that’s a, you know, setting up your company is, is, is so incredibly stressful. It takes up so much time. But for us, we were slightly different because I’d done it before. You know, I ran my own business before, in entertainment, and I was joking about working in copper face jacks, but I ran an entertainment company for, you know, yeah, and I, you know, I used to do lighting at weddings. It’s not a crazy business. Yeah, I used to, I always thought it was very funny, because I’m almost blind, and I was providing lighting. But, yeah, that was, that was great for many years. So I’d learned, and then in my, in my previous role, which was also a startup like I kind of learned a lot from from from the business aspect and how to approach it, what to do right, what to do wrong, you know, as opposed to anything else. But the first thing I’d always say is, you know, cash flow is just so critical that you’re on top of that. You know, what are you spending? Why will you spend not just today, but what are you spending for the next 18 months? And then, you know, it’s, no, it’s, it’s great having a great product idea, but if you can’t get it to market, you’re, you’re not making money.

Larissa Feeney  18:28

Yeah, exactly, exactly. And I mean, what your what your previous experience has taught you is that even though this, the idea for this product was born out of a passion and a lived experience. Why that’s important. And also, there also has to be a commercial market for the product. And in your case, there also has to be a willingness on the part of investors to invest in the product in order to get it to market rapidly. And that’s just what I want to ask you about now, is the investor that process, because you said you’re not actively raising right now, but you have done and you obviously have a runway, and you’ve got all that figured out. So I have two questions, how did you find the fundraising process? Initially, I’m guessing that was pre seed, or seed of some of some type, and what? What’s your next step from a fundraising perspective? So

Kyran O’Mahoney  19:16

fundraising, I’ve gone through it twice now in my career, and this time successfully. And what I would take away from it is that it is, you’re like, you’re like a walking salesman. You got to be ready for a lot of no’s, and you got to be ready for people told me your deck is too big. Your deck is too small. There’s not enough detail. There’s too much detail. You know, what’s your exit? I’m like, it’s there. No, that’s not the exit. I’m looking for you like you get so much contradictory advice. And what I’ve learned after this experience is it’s really everyone obsesses about an investment deck. Investment decks just get you the meeting, you know. So keep it simple. Make it obviously professional. Don’t remove it. Remove typos and stuff like that. But it’s the. You think that’s the most important piece when you get into the room with and, you know, we’ve got, we’ve got multiple investors, so I’m saying this, every one of them is a different personality and is looking for a different thing from you. You know, some are looking for the passion for you as a founder and and you got to bring that to the table and say, I have this idea, and this is why I will deliver it. I will deliver it because of the passion I have. And the second thing is, you need to be really clear with your numbers and be ready to be challenged in numbers like from the very start of our fundraising round, I’d created a full cash flow analysis, full projections. I’d broken all our products down, so no matter what audience I had in a room with me, and they said, Well, what’s your expectation? Expectations of x at, you know, 2026 2027 I had that straight away. And I think that gives a lot of confidence, you know, to people so, because ultimately, you tell the story first, and then people want to know how they’re going to get the money back. EIS is, has been a big win for us, to be honest. You know, particularly the, you know, we haven’t gone with VCs. We were too early stage VCs, frankly. And I think what’s been a little bit unusual about our approach is that, with the team we have on board, building products is what our expertise is. So we were really selling our competency to deliver a product, as opposed to, you know, just take a chance on this as an idea and, you know, and you know, and that’s, that’s what we sold, which is a little bit unusual, because, you know, in seed, certainly, and even pre seed, or even when you talk to a lot of VCs, they really want to see something working. Where I was going, I have an idea, yeah, because

Larissa Feeney  21:31

you’re right, because they all say, have your minimum viable product. Know what you’re doing. So you didn’t even have that. You just, you had an idea, but

Unknown Speaker  21:39

I didn’t even have a figma? I had nothing, I had nothing written,

Speaker 3  21:43

but you had your expertise, your background, and everybody else

Unknown Speaker  21:47

around you as well. Yeah,

Kyran O’Mahoney  21:48

exactly. And I was very, I was very conscious of that, because we got quite fair with one particular VC. Now it didn’t work out. But like they’re saying, Can you even just show me a figma? I said, No, I’m not spending the process I want to follow is that when I have, when I have the money, and you believe in the idea, I will spend the next, you know, six to eight weeks making sure that’s perfect. Otherwise, I’m just making it up because I haven’t had the time to put in the analysis and the product side of things. Now that is, that is, from what I’ve learned, is slightly atypical, and the people that ultimately, you know, it was mostly high net worth and people like that, but they had to buy into the concept. So we really sold the concepts, but

Larissa Feeney  22:24

you obviously had the conviction Kyra, because even having the confidence to say no to that request, yeah, like, you know you were 100 was uncertain, like you were you were able to say no, because a lot of people in your position would find themselves flapping about, try to produce the information in a way that the the person wants it, rather than say no, this is what we’re doing, and this is how we’re presenting it. And you can, you can tweak it a little bit depend on your audience, but in general, this is, this is the data that tells me a lot about you and your conviction and your product and your plans. And you know that not everybody’s going to say yes, and that’s okay. You know

Kyran O’Mahoney  23:03

that was learning. I have to say it’s looking back at it now in hindsight, but I actually, I can’t believe I just said that out loud in a public forum. But anyway, but you know that I just said no, but like, I just I had, I had a had a road map to success that I needed to follow. And, you know, for me now, we haven’t been successful. And also stress, I’m not being we’re lucky to get the funding. We still have to release something and make some money, you know. And that’s actually the one that keeps me awake at night at the moment, you know, I used to, I used to joke, back when I was a CTO, like, the things that keep me awake at at night are cyber security, whereas now the thing that keeps me awake is that, okay, we’re releasing a May, I really hope people you know, because you’re taking your gamble, is will, will, will the products hit the market the way you want it, and Will people buy it, or will people utilize it and and give you the feedback you want? And there’s nothing worse being on a call with a potential customer and they say, Oh, does it do this? And you go, no, but it should,

Unknown Speaker  23:57

you know? You say, No, but that’s a great idea. Yeah, that’s a really

Kyran O’Mahoney  24:00

good idea. Just write that down and talk to our developers. Yeah, so, and that has happened in previous roles where I was talking to someone very senior, and they said, but I, you know, I think what we really need is this. And I remember thinking, Oh, no, I got it wrong. No, no, I didn’t say it out loud. But, you know, that’s what I was thinking. But there is, there is a huge risk to this. But I think all we can do at this point is, you know, like I said, focus on the product, use the experience we have behind us, and try and make the best product we can. I

Larissa Feeney  24:31

was going to say if you were to, if you were to speak to somebody who was earlier on in the process than you are right now. So you’ve gone through your first fund around it’s closed. It was successful. Congratulations on that. You’re now focusing on the product, and you now have, what, three or four months to get this product out to market and to get the feedback. As you say, if you were to give advice to somebody who started on the fundraising journey, so where you were 12 months ago, what would you say? Is there anything that you you would do? Better, or you would do differently. The next time,

Kyran O’Mahoney  25:03

I think, when I look back and I think I, like every founder, started off and literally, start Googling and trying to find them and read as much as I could. And you know, when you’re starting, and you’re sitting alone on your kitchen table or whatever, and you’re you’re trying to figure out, like, where do I find a high network person. Or where do I find, you know, someone that’s looking to do an EIS investment or, you know, the first thing I would say is that do your research. You know, learn about cap tables. Learn about, you know, what the potential for? You know, ways that people can put money into a business are listen to podcasts such as this. You know, there was one I remember that, that you guys did earlier on, on, I think it was on EIS, even to be able to talk the right things like that, because I knew nothing about that. Would know

Larissa Feeney  25:48

what the terminology means, like EBITDA or recurring review, or working capital or even cash flow, yeah, things like that. Even to understand the lingo.

Kyran O’Mahoney  25:58

Like, it’s like, you know what? A product owner doesn’t know how to write the code, but they know they know the terminology to interact with a development team. It’s the same thing. Like, if you’re if you’re in an investment meeting, and they’re like, what’s your expected retire, and you’re like, what’s that, or what’s your projection for X, Y and Z, and you don’t know it. I do think that doesn’t give confidence, but you don’t have to have an Accountancy degree. You just need to do a little bit of research and and see what is like. And then I remember one time a couple of years ago, benata was talking to an investor at a conference, and he said to me, like, Are you open to a convertible note? And I went, no idea,

Unknown Speaker  26:31

sure, yeah, open to anything.

Kyran O’Mahoney  26:33

Look confident. And go, yeah, absolutely. And then they’re like, Googling, you know, but there is a certain bit of that. So I think, I think step one is, do your research. I think I really want to emphasize that that advice that I got earlier is that you really have to leverage your own network, your personal network, you know. And that doesn’t mean go and ask everyone for money. It means tell people about what you’re doing and ask them if they want to be involved, you know, they don’t. It doesn’t necessarily be money like so sometimes in one of the one particular instance for us, like it was a recommendation of a recommendation of recommendation. And then I got a phone call from someone. They said, Listen, I’ve been talking to this person who knows, this person who, who you did a pitch to, is there any chance you could do for me? And that that was that person ended up being an investor, and I never met them before, you know. So again, you know it’s, it’s leveraging the people around you that that you know, and asking for help and asking for support. And that’s the other thing I think, is really, really important. Like Ireland has an incredible startup culture, an incredible suite of supports to support founders and support startups and just engage with them, you know. And they’re like people I found, you know, even like enterprise Ireland, they might be able to invest in you straight away, but they’ll give you as much advice as you have. And we got, we got supported by Leo very early on, which was great. I

Larissa Feeney  27:48

was just going to ask you that actually, have you availed of Leo or a yes, you have.

Kyran O’Mahoney  27:52

So yeah, we were, we were really early when we went to Leo, and we were lucky enough to get supported by a feasibility study, which enabled us to do a lot early, before we’d actually secured any investment. So that was, that was really good. And actually I found, I have to say, the team in in we were engaged with the said Dublin team, excellent, like they if, if you had a question, or, you know, if you wanted to be partnered with a mentor that give you additional advice, just brilliant. You know, I ended up doing two with two different people, and both of them were like, I’m I really want to help you with this, and but that, you know, that supports that are out there, and then as you transition into EI, and we started those conversations like, again, there’s like, a field of supports that are available. And even, even, I have to be be honest, with some of the Irish based VCs that we spoke to. Now, as I said, I didn’t, we didn’t we didn’t end up getting investment VCs, but they were very much, right? We love the idea for X reason. We can’t do it now, but here’s the three or four milestones you need to hit, and then come back to us, you know. So, yeah, I didn’t zero success with trying any VC outside of Ireland, you know. But the community here in in Ireland is, is excellent, but

Larissa Feeney  28:57

I think you’re, I think learning that, see what what you were told from those VCs parents. So, you know, okay, you’re not where we need you to be now. But if you were to get recurring revenue to x or EBITDA to y, or, you know, X number of customers, whatever the case might be, whatever the metric is, you know now that whenever you get there, you’ll be back knocking on their door. No, nothing is a waste of your time whenever you’re at that stage, because you don’t know who you’re having a coffee with. You don’t know who they might know who their network is, and ultimately, you might, you might come back to them in 235, years time. You know, it’s all good. It’s all very positive. Yeah, yeah. What have you found personally, the, you know, the hardest part of this journey so far,

Kyran O’Mahoney  29:45

I’m going to say, I’m gonna answer it in two ways, if that’s okay now that I think about it, but the one thing that everyone says is, as a founder, you need to be resilient, and that’s totally true, right? And you need to be, you know, you need to, you know, believe and just draw. Forward. But what I actually struggle with a little bit, would you believe is in this process, is that, because it’s my company, have to prioritize my family as well, like I would happily sit here and and just keep going, get up at eight o’clock and work through and because, you know, you feel that personal sense of responsibility, and now you should, and you should use that as a driving factor, but you know, it’s also important that you get out and go to the gym, you know, or you go do your favorite sport, or, you know, you stop when your kids are home from school. Like one of the board members the other day actually only said to me, gym every day. Lunchtime, get out and get away from your desk, like you’re and it was like, Oh, actually, I’ve barely taken lunch in two weeks, you know. And like, little things like that you need, you need to prioritize as well, because, and even after a week or whatever of doing that like I genuinely feel now, I’m coming to meetings more refreshed. I’m, you know, I’m thinking clearer so that so find, find that balance is hugely important, particularly if you’re, if you’re that kind of personality type, and I think as a founder, a lot of people are, or a business owner, you just want to give your entirety to it, but you know, you also have to have

Speaker 4  31:03

a life. Getting that balance, though, is really difficult. I have found it a huge

Kyran O’Mahoney  31:07

challenge, I have to say, because you realize that now I’m working from home, obviously, because we’re startup, we don’t have a thing, so I’m not commuting. So my commute is like a minute walk down the garden. But you know, my wife would sometimes say to me, God, was the last time you left the house. You know, you never have to think about so now I make sure I walk my child to school in the morning. I make, you know, I make sure, you know, finishing an X time every day and putting that structure in place, because it makes you better at what you’re doing when you’re coming to work the next day. You know, if you’re coming to work tired and irritable, you’re just annoying everyone around you, as opposed to being a leader and embracing that, that’s that’s really important, I think, and that was hard learned. I can tell you,

Larissa Feeney  31:47

yeah, no, I know absolutely, and you know, and I’ve been through that so I can identify completely, and it’s your responsibility as a leader of this company to be in it for the long haul, to your employees, to your investors, to your customers, to your family. You’ve got a responsibility to be able to do this for the long term, and it’s just not possible to work at a certain level over the long term. It’s just it’s just not possible you hit a wall and collapse. You know, Karen, I have one last question for you, and that’s in relation to the future. So you’ve been a technologist now for 20 or 25 years? I’m going to say, what are your hopes for change in the future? Like you talked a little bit about AI and I mean, what do you what would you like to see in the future that we currently don’t have right now? You

Kyran O’Mahoney  32:35

know, I was debating what I would say about this, but I think I’m going to, if you don’t mind, I think at the moment, it’s clear that diversity equity inclusion is incredibly important, right? And I think topically, at the moment, it’s been seen as a negative as opposed to a positive. And what I would say is that companies need to double down on diversity equity inclusion. If you look at there is companies out there that are using that, I’ve always loved, that term, double down, you know, you have to, you do inclusion, not because it’s easy, but because it’s hard. And as, as many people can attest to, is that the things in your life that you’re most proud of are the things that they were the most difficult, certainly from in my experience, you know, and it isn’t easy to make accommodations for everyone, or it isn’t easy to make a website. Well, I would think it’s easy, but you know it, there is a level of complexity to it. You know, there’s a lot of dedication. Is probably a better way to put it, to make websites, make digital products as as usable by everyone. But you know what? It’s the right thing to do, and I think fundamentally at my core, I want to be an advocate for that going forward, and let people know that, you know, just because something is not the easiest thing to do doesn’t mean it’s not worthwhile.

Larissa Feeney  33:52

I absolutely agree with you. And whenever you’re talking I’m actually thinking of the D and I Yes, and also the debate that’s going on at the moment around remote working versus in person working versus hybrid working, and the companies that are bringing their people back to the office. And you know, the questions I’m asking is, why are they bringing people back to the office? I mean, do they have data to suggest that productivity has reduced, the outputs have been affected in some way. Or is it easier to bring people back to the office? And which case back to your point? Is it the right thing to do, or is it the easy thing to

Kyran O’Mahoney  34:30

do? Yeah, and we thought a lot about this. And in previous roles, you know, if you look at some of the bigger, bigger companies, they always use, oh, collaboration. We want to be on collaboration amongst their teams. And I think some of it comes down to, frankly, if people were really honest, they’re they’re scared that their employees aren’t, aren’t delivering. That’s just a management issue. That’s a performance issue, that’s not, that’s not how you work from home. So again, I think it’s the easy option, you know, to your point, I think so. We’re a fully remote company, and we have staff. In not just in Ireland and Europe, but in lots of places. And I got off a call earlier today, and the team were delivering and presenting, and I was saying, like, wow, like, almost, almost goosebumps, you know. And I think you there’s a, there’s a wonderful caption from Spotify, Shopify, I can’t quite remember, but they say we trust our employees. We’re not bringing them back to the office, you know. And it does take trust as a leader to do it. But again, I think it’s down to the harder way to do something is typically, in my view, the right way, because you know, you’re picking the easy option, you know. And one thing I’ve always found is that, you know, you see a lot of emails Now that said, you know, I’m emailing you out of office hours, please don’t reply. I think that’s so important to build that culture that I like to walk my little girl to school in the morning, but that means I’m a little bit late to start, so I work a little bit later in the evening, or maybe I might catch up with something on a Saturday, and that works for me. But I always would say to people, if they jump online and answer, no, no, no, I didn’t expect that. You have to give that balance and and I think that, you know, developing if a staff member is performing why you care where they work exactly,

Larissa Feeney  36:05

Exactly. Let’s base it on outputs. We’re assuming that people are, because people are sitting in offices, that they’re working well, and that’s a very dangerous assumption. You know, they could well be working well, but they may not be. If that’s all you’re looking at, you know, it’s, um, yeah, fascinating. Kyrin, I could sit and talk to you all day. Thank you very much for your time. I think you’ve, you’ve given loads of great, valuable advice to founders and entrepreneurs who are starting their businesses and maybe starting on the fundraising journey. Thank you very much this. Kyran O’Mahoney, founder of Nexus Inclusion, thank you. I really enjoyed it.

Speaker 2  36:39

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