Thomas Edison once said “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work”, which I found that all the speakers at the conference could relate to. On the 20th November, I attended my first DICE conference; “Get Started”. To my surprise and excitement, I gathered so much information about entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs. Each speaker gave me an insight into the working life of an entrepreneur; from the struggles to the success. Nine entrepreneurial professionals spoke at the conference.
In week 2 of the semester, we learned about entrepreneurship. I learned that there are numerous types of entrepreneurs, ranging from young entrepreneurs and serial entrepreneurs to part-time entrepreneurs and social entrepreneurs.
Áine Kerr
The first speaker was Áine Kerr. She is the Co-Founder and COO of Neva-Labs, which is a new Irish start-up developing solutions for people who want to control their news experience. She set Neva-Labs with her Co-Founder, Mark Little. She has previously worked with newspapers such as The Irish Times and The Irish Examiner as well as working with Facebook.
What surprised me the most about Áine, and most of the other speakers, was the path that they thought they would take. Áine studied teaching at St. Patricks College and she taught for two years. Áine then changed her career in Journalism, which is what she has worked at for the last number of years. She completed her master in Journalism at DCU. Áine worked with The Irish Times as a news reporter, she then moved to Irish Examiner where she was a political reporter and then to the Irish Independent where she was a Political Correspondent.
After nearly four years of working with Irish newspapers, Áine worked with Storyful where she worked for five years as a Political Editor and a Managing Editor. Storyful was the first social media journal in the world. At Storyful, she worked major companies such as Facebook and Google. Before founding NevaLabs, Áine worked with Facebook for nearly two years as a Manager for Journalism Partnerships.
Less than a year ago, Áine founder NevaLabs with her Co-Founder Mark. Through all of Áine’s experience in journalism and media has helped her realize that, we as a media generation are getting tired of the “price of free”, ads and cookies. In the US, people paying for media has rose from 4% in 2016 to 18% in 2017 (Digital News Report, 2017)
NevaLabs was set up for this specific reason, to help people take control. NevaLabs is a team of journalists and researchers aiming to help people take control of their media life. It is an app that helps people understand their media diet. Áine inspired me as a female entrepreneur but not only that, she gave me the confidence and showed me that the career path I am taking now at 19, may change but it will change for the better. (LinkedIn, 2017).
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ainekerr/
Marissa Carter
Another entrepreneur who was also at the conference was Marissa Carter. Marissa is the CEO and Founder of tanning brand Cocoa Brown. Marissa talked about the financial struggles she encountered throughout her whole entrepreneurial experience, especially when she asked her husband “what do they do with babies in prison”, after receiving a huge revenue bill!
Marissa’s journey started after she dropped out of college after her first year DIT. What I admired about Marissa, is her fearlessness in getting what she wants and her hard work. After dropping out of college, Marissa applied for a receptionist in a beauty college and she fearlessly asked could she study part-time for free. Marissa’s determination showed me that anything is possible, if you try. After completing her studies in the college, Marissa began to teach in the college. She later left the job and opened her own beauty salon a room in the back of her house. She later had to move to a commercial premise, due to her landlord being unhappy.
In 2012, Marissa developed the world first ever one-hour tan, after she applied tan one night and woke up with her son tanned also, this reminded me when we studied innovation in our lecture. This should Marissa innovation talent and her ability to notice a gap in the market. Marissa pitched her idea to a distributing company. She needed them to order 25,000 units, so that she could sell the for less than €10 and pay for the production of the tan. Marissa aspired for her tan to be sold in Pennys stores and all leading pharmacy’s in Ireland, and this was achieved within six months of the tan being launched, and three months after that it was being sold in Superdrug stores in the UK. The 50,000 units that the company ordered were sold out in five weeks. Cocoa Brown now batch produce over 500,000 units at a time (LinkedIn, 2017).
Cocoa Brown is first in “Stellar’s top seven Irish brands we can’t get enough of” (Stellar, 2015)
What I found most surprising, but inspirational, was that all of Marissa success was achieved with no investment, just blood, sweat and tears! (Cocoa Brown was five years old on the day our conference, talk about that for timing).
https://www.linkedin.com/in/marissa-carter-53901769/
Marissa, and her infamous Cocoa Brown- one -hour tan.
DC Cahalane
Another speaker at the conference was DC Cahalane. DC is the CEO of Republic at Work. Republic of Work rent office spaces, innovation rooms and lounges to young aspiring entrepreneurial people. This is a place where people can meet each other, share opinions, and possibly create a world-renowned idea.
DC has been involved in many businesses throughout his career. DC is Head of Growth at Teamwork.ie ( https://www.teamwork.com/ ). Teamwork is a company that grew from an eleven-people company to a 186-people company, with no investment. They make over €2 million per month. DC was also part of Trust-IT. Trust IT was a company made up of three people, and three years later it was sold for €43 million.
I really enjoyed listening to DC as he gave us a lot of advice on successful start-up and what is most important to a business. DC explained that marketing is one of the most important element of a business, but the market must be done by you, the founder, as no one will market your business better than yourself, which is something that really stuck out to me, as I have never heard before. DC also talked about the hard life of entrepreneurs. You must sacrifice to be successful, you live and breathe you job, but I think that the result might be worth it all (LinkedIn,2017). One quote I found when researching DC which I found funny was ‘Thinking that everyone has what it takes to be an entrepreneur is a bit like saying everyone has what it takes to play Premiership football’. (Silicone Republic, 2015)
http://www.republicofwork.com/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMctQ-bJKIs
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dcirl/
DC speaking at our “Get Started” Conference.
Joe Cullinane
One speaker that I feel brought a lot of knowledge and experience to the conference is Joe Cullinane. Joe is the Founder and CEO of Strategic Artistry, a Silicon Valley strategy and business model innovation firm. Strategic Artistry works with entrepreneurs, start-ups and enterprise leaders to develop innovative strategies to connect with customers and partners. Joe works with entrepreneurs, executives and start-ups as an advisory, executive coach and mentor.
Joe has an abundance of experiences is numerous different area, which I feel brought a great deal to the conference. Joe has worked in sales, marketing, software, start-ups and, he done some teaching in universities across the world and here, in our very own DCU School of Business. Joe has held executive and sales roles at leading global technology companies including Xerox Corporation, NCR Corporation and Diversified Software (General Assembly, 2017)
Similar to DC, Joe gave us young entrepreneurs a great deal of advice for starting a new company. Joe explained to us how being an entrepreneur may be stressful, but to succeed you have got to have fun at it. He encourages us to grow organically if we plan on starting a business. to encourage investors in the long-run, as investment to earlier in the business may be negative to the decision-making, which I felt was fantastic advice (LinkedIn, 2017).
https://strategicartistry.weebly.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/joecullinane/
Joe and Alex, from Kubicle, in the hot seat!
Alex Hamilton
Alex Hamilton is Co-Founder of Kubicle, which was founded in Ireland in 2014. Kubicle helps business’ use computer software such as Microsoft Excel. Kubicle was created with the goal of addressing these issues with concise and contextualized online business training. They have worked with major companies such as Deloitte, KPMG and KLM, which has created a strong demand for their product.
During the conference, Alex gave us a very interesting insight into his business and his business life. Kubicle is an unfounded start-up, and Alex explained how it is difficult as they could do more with millions, he is happy the business has grown through sales and the demand of the product. One piece of advice from Alex that stood out to me was, to have different people with different skills in your team as they all bring something different. Alex also mentioned that the mentors in his life has really pushed him to success (LinkedIn, 2017).
https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexhamilton4/
“Best lessons are sometimes the hardest”.
Maeve Kneafsey
Maeve is Co-Founder of CloudKPI. CloudKPI is the autopilot guiding SaaS businesses to the right decisions to help them scale fast. Automating the process of delivering live SaaS metrics to the team and investors right across the customer journey. Allowing SaaS to accelerate growth and satisfy investors.
Maeve is a serial entrepreneur. Before founding CloudKPI, Maeve worked with Reachout.com for 5 years where she was a director. Reachout.com is an online charitable organisation that helps young people lead happy lives. Maeve also founded and is CEO of market finder LTD, which helps business’ increase sales.
Maeve, with her years of experience, gave us some very useful tips on entrepreneurship. Maeve described entrepreneurship as a roller coaster-lots of ups and downs. Maeve mentioned that learning to read body language and learning how to sell are key aspects of entrepreneurship. Maeve also explained how useful accelerators are in expanding your business. Enterprise Ireland assisted CloudKPI, in moving out to Silicon Valley. Unlike the other speakers, Maeve gave us an insight into what entrepreneurs usually get wrong which I found useful. one thing that Maeve said that struck out in my mind is that customer experience is the best brand builder- free trials really help to show you if people like the product (LinkedIn, 2017).
https://www.linkedin.com/in/maevekneafsey/
Maeve speaking at the conference.
Andrew Kavanagh
Andrew is the Founder and CEO, Kavaleer Productions Limited, which is an animation production company. I felt as if I got an insight to the extremity of work in the media industry when Andrew said, “there is a new product every time a new cartoon concept is developed”. Andrew shared his years upon years of experience and work with us during his talk.
Andrew has worked with all top TV station such as RTÉ, with RTÉ Jr and CBB, with Cbeebies. Andrews cartoons can be watched by kids (and adults) across the world. Andrew has also worked with Disney, Sesame St. and CN, which I found incredible. Andrew mentioned one of his new shows, “Kiva can do it”, which shows young girls that they can do anything they wish to do in today’s world, which I found extremely inspiring for young kids (LinkedIn, 2017).
https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewkavanagh/
Andrew talking about one of his projects- Dougie Noir.
Ann O’Dea
Ann is CEO and Co-Founder of Silicon Republic and Inspirefest. Silicon Republic is one of the leading online publications in Europe with over half-a-million page views each month and growing (LinkedIn, 2017).
Inspirefest is a unique international festival of technology, science, design and the arts. It is a conference that is all about diversity, as one-year Ann went to a conference and she was the only women speaking at it. It is made up of about 70% women and 30% men.
Inspirefest 2018 is taking place in Dublin on the 21st – 22nd June, in the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre. You can buy tickets here at: https://www.universe.com/events/inspirefest-2018-tickets-dublin-MB18Q2.
From doing my research of Inspirefest, I found some interesting videos from last year’s Inspirefest: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5yVVaTblFnlNeVloeDgXDA/videos
I found Ann’s enthusiasm and need for equality extremely empowering.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/annodea/
Ann in the hot seat!
Niall Dennehy
Niall is Co-Founder of AID: Tech, whose aim it is to bring social and financial inclusion to the undocumented and unserved using Blockchain technology. The idea came about when Niall’s Co-Founder took part in a sponsorship, in which a man donated money but, the money donated could not be traced to the receiver. AID: Tech bring Transparency to the Distribution of Aid, Welfare, Remittances and Donations.
Niall is an example of a social entrepreneur, which we learned about in our lecture. A social entrepreneur is taking a business-like, innovative approach to the mission of
delivering community services. He is performing a duty that will not directly benefit him. Niall has been involved in numerous different projects. He also Co-Founded Imprez, which delivers training for the website prezi (LinkedIn, 2017).
https://www.linkedin.com/in/niall-dennehy-bb311016/
Niall talking about his inspirational Co-Founder, Joe.
I found the conference very inspiring and empowering. It gave me an insight into the life and work of an entrepreneur. It backed up the information I learned in week 2 of the Semester which was on entrepreneurship. I hoped you enjoyed reading my blog. The next conference “Get Social” is on the 13th February, I hope you look forward to my next blog.
All videos from the conference are available at: https://www.youtube.com/user/BusinessSchoolDCU/videos
References:
Digital News Report (2017) Available at: https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/Digital%20News%20Report%202017%20web_0.pdf (Accessed on 28/11/17)
General Assembly (2017) Joe Cullinane. Available at: https://generalassemb.ly/instructors/joe-cullinane/3330 (Accessed on 27/11/17)
LinkedIn (2017) Áine Kerr. Available at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ainekerr/ (Accessed on 28/11/17)
LinkedIn (2017) Alex Hamilton. Available at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexhamilton4/ (Accessed on 28/11/17)
LinkedIn (2017) Andrew Kavanagh. Available at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewkavanagh/ (Accessed on 28/11/17)
LinkedIn (2017) Ann O’Dea. Available at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/annodea/ (Accessed on 28/11/17)
LinkedIn (2017) DC Cahalane. Available at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dcirl/ (Accessed on 28/11/17)
LinkedIn (2017) Joe Cullinane. Available at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joecullinane/ (Accessed on 28/11/17)
LinkedIn (2017) Niall Dennehy. Available at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/niall-dennehy-bb311016/ (Accessed on 28/11/17)
LinkedIn (2017) Maeve Kneafsey. Available at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maevekneafsey/ (Accessed on 28/11/17)
LinkedIn (2017) Marissa Carter. Available at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marissa-carter-53901769/ (Accessed on 28/11/17)
Silicone Republic (2015) Start-up advice. Available at: https://www.siliconrepublic.com/start-ups/start-up-advice-dc-cahalane-from-teamwork-com (Accessed on 25/11/17)
Stellar (2015) Available at: http://stellar.ie/beauty/7-irish-beauty-brands-we-simply-cant-get-enough-of/15955 (Accessed on 28/11/17)
Michaela Devaney 