Conor Buckley, Granite Digital
Conor Buckley is co-founder and CEO of Granite Digital, which is based in Cork and employs more than 135 people.
The company designs, builds, supports and markets websites and web and mobile applications. It also drives growth in clients’ online channels by integrating content, technology and marketing strategy.
Granite works with some of the largest businesses in the country and is expanding operations in Britain, Dubai and the US. An additional office in Belfast is scheduled to open in the coming weeks. Granite has grown rapidly and is looking to double the size of the business over the next three years.
What vision/light-bulb moment prompted you to start up in business?
It wasn’t so much a light-bulb moment as a continuous build-up of requests that led us to believe there was a significant opportunity to offer our skills to a wide range of businesses.
RM Block
Back in the early 2000s, while working in an online travel business, the original four founders of Granite Digital were each being individually asked to help other businesses set up websites, host them, run digital ads, launch SEO campaigns and more.
It became clear that there was a large and growing demand for digital services and that’s what inspired us to start Granite Digital.
Describe your business model and what makes your business unique.
Granite Digital delivers a fully integrated design, development and marketing service that ensures your content, digital delivery, technology and all digital touchpoints are seamlessly connected.
This integration allows for a consistent message and experience across your entire digital footprint. From in-store technology to websites, mobile applications and all digital and social media content, we create a unified and engaging experience for our clients’ customers.
What is your greatest business achievement to date?
Creating the company and building it into a €20 million business across three continents is without a doubt our greatest achievement.
What was your ‘back-to-the-wall’ moment and how did you overcome it?
Our greatest back-to-the-wall moment was losing our biggest customer early in the business. This left us with significant cash problems arising from a 50 per cent drop in revenue and a huge bad debt that left the business on the brink.
Through incredible hard work and dedication from the entire team, all of whom we kept, we weathered the storm.
What moment/deal would you cite as the ‘game changer’ or turning point for the company?
One of the most significant early turning points was the acquisition of a significant book of business in Cork in 2011. This happened largely by chance through a relationship we had with that business.
It brought us a lot of new clients and we learned a huge amount about how to integrate teams, systems and clients into our business. We have used acquisitions very effectively since then to grow the business.
To what extent does your business trade internationally and what are your future plans/ambitions?
We currently generate 30 per cent of our business from overseas and plan to grow that to 50 per cent over the next three years. We export to over a dozen countries, including the US, the UAE and the UK. We see the majority of our growth coming from international markets, particularly the US.
Describe your growth funding path.
Granite has funded our business through our own operating profits, which allows for a sustainable business that gives our stakeholders security and ensures the future viability of the company for our team, clients and shareholders.
We backfill with bank debt for acquisitions and are currently looking at a private equity fundraise for significant US expansion.
How will your market look in three years and where would you like your business to be?
We have doubled the business every three years, so there’s a good chance we will be a €40 million company with almost 300 people, a large proportion of whom will be in the US. We will also have larger footprints in the UAE and the UK. We expect that more than half of our revenue will come from outside Ireland.
What are your annual revenues and profits?
Granite’s turnover in 2025 will be close to €20 million. We are profitable and have been since the first year of trading.
What impact have Donald Trump’s tariffs had on your business? How has this affected your view of the United States as a place in which to invest?
To date, it hasn’t had any impact. We are investing very significantly in the US and still very much see it as a key part of our future. As a services business, we are not currently being directly affected by the tariffs, but many of our clients may be.
Donnchadh Campbell, Europlan Group
Donnchadh Campbell is managing director of Europlan Group, which is an engineering procurement and construction management company founded in 1977.
For nearly five decades, it has partnered with blue-chip clients in the power, infrastructure and built environment industries, delivering complex projects globally.
Headquartered in Dublin, Europlan operates across multiple geographies, including Ireland, Britain, the Middle East and East Asia. It employs 150 people.
What vision/light-bulb moment prompted you to start up in business?
The real light-bulb moment came for me in 2012 when we identified a potential opening with Japanese clients, who were beginning to invest in the global market after a long period of entrenchment.
In the years since, we have partnered with various Japanese and global clients, which has accelerated our global expansion and reputation
What is your greatest business achievement to date?
Our current project in Inverness, where we are delivering a sub-sea cable factory for our client Sumitomo Electrical Industries stands out as a headline achievement for our business. However, I would also consider the growth of our team and the exceptional level of talent we have acquired as a significant achievement and one of which we are proud.
What was your ‘back-to-the-wall’ moment and how did you overcome it?
While you’re constantly experiencing back-to-the-wall moments when growing a business, Covid-19 posed a significant challenge for us, halting 80 per cent of our operations and preventing us from travelling overseas to meet international clients.
The calibre of our people and their solutions-focused mindset were key to navigating this period, with our team coming up with novel ideas to work around the constraints.
An example of this was on one of our projects in Saudi Arabia where we were able to mobilise staff who had remained in Saudi Arabia to engage with our clients who were unable to travel. Our teams bought Go-Pro cameras and put them on their helmets and walked through the site using Microsoft Teams to show the client the areas they wanted to see.
Throughout this period, by maintaining open communication and consistently delivering smaller projects, often for reduced fees, our team was able to foster deeper trust and stronger relationships with our clients.
What moment/deal would you cite as the ‘game changer’ or turning point for the company?
Our sub-sea cable factory project with Sumitomo in Inverness is a game changer for us. Not only in size but also in scale. According to Enterprise Ireland, it is the largest services contract ever signed between an Irish business and a Japanese company.
What were the best and the worst pieces of advice you received when starting out?
The best piece of advice I received was to just make a decision. Ninety per cent of the time you will be right and the rest can be rectified. The cost of indecision often outweighs the cost of making a mistake.
Rather than the worst piece of advice, I believe the most damaging decisions that I’ve made in business have come from following ideas that lacked substance. In my experience, it is essential to be on guard and question whether there is real substance behind what you’re doing.
To what extent does your business trade internationally and what are your future plans/ambitions?
Europlan group aims to trade at least 70 per cent internationally and 30 per cent domestically. Currently, almost 90 per cent of our business is international.
Describe your growth funding path.
We’ve successfully grown the company organically to date, without external investment or debt, giving us a strong foundation and full control during the early stages.
Now, as we enter the next phase of the company’s life cycle, we recognise that scaling as an engineering company within the energy sector, which is poised for major growth over the next five to 10 years, will require deeper investment in talent and strategic infrastructure. As such, we’ll be exploring all opportunities that support sustainable, long-term growth.
How will your market look in three years and where would you like your business to be?
Over the next three years, we anticipate strong and sustained growth in the infrastructure sector, particularly in power distribution and renewable energy. We are already supporting several major infrastructure roll-outs and remain focused on strengthening those client relationships.
Recent developments, such as the rapid growth in AI-related energy demand and large-scale events like the Portugal/Spain blackout, have underscored the urgent need for energy security and significant investment in grid infrastructure.
We see a clear opportunity to be at the forefront of this transition, helping deliver the next generation of resilient, low-carbon energy systems across Europe.
Brendan Noud (CEO) and Des Anderson, LearnUpon
Brendan Noud (CEO) and Des Anderson (CTO) are co-founders of LearnUpon, a learning management system used by more than 1,500 companies globally. It was founded in 2012, and is used by more than 24 million learners.
LearnUpon’s customers use the platform to deliver and track elearning courses covering topics such as employee onboarding, compliance and customer and partner training. Its customers in Ireland include Brown Thomas Arnotts, Eason, Keelings and Portwest.
The company employs 300 people across five offices in Dublin, Belgrade, Philadelphia, Salt Lake City and Sydney.
What vision/light-bulb moment prompted you to start up in business?
Having worked in the elearning space for a combined 20 years, we realised that many learning management systems on the market were not fit for purpose. They were clunky, difficult to use and had poor customer support. Building an alternative that addressed these problems was the key driver behind our vision for LearnUpon.
Describe your business model and what makes your business unique.
LearnUpon is a cloud-based business-to-business software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform. Our customers pay an annual subscription fee to access the platform.
Our focus on providing an easily configurable platform tailored to the needs of our customers and the different audiences they serve, combined with world-class 24/7 customer support and implementation, are key differentiators for LearnUpon.
What is your greatest business achievement to date?
In what is an incredibly crowded space, with over 1,000 competitors, our greatest business achievement to date has been building one of the leading learning management systems globally.
What was your ‘back-to-the-wall’ moment and how did you overcome it?
As a bootstrapped start-up, the early days provided several tough situations where making payroll was going to be very difficult. With help from friends and family we always managed to overcome these challenges, but it was certainly a stressful time for us as founders.
What moment/deal would you cite as the ‘game changer’ or turning point for the company?
Realising that our portal features were perfect for training multiple audiences – both internal employees and external audiences like customers, partners and resellers – was a game changer. This significantly increased the value we brought to our customers’ businesses space.
To what extent does your business trade internationally and what are your future plans/ambitions?
We have focused on international markets, particularly the US, from the very start. Today 98 per cent of our business is international with the US accounting for over 70 per cent of our customer base and revenues.
Describe your growth funding path.
Our early investors were a combination of friends and family, supported by Enterprise Ireland. We received competitive start funding from Enterprise Ireland in 2012, followed by HPSU funding in late 2013. In 2020, LearnUpon closed a $56 million Series A round with Summit Partners.
What are your annual revenues and profits?
Our revenues are in excess of €40 million with strong gross margins of more than 80 per cent. We expect to be north of €100 million in annual recurring revenues in the next three years.
How are you deploying AI in your business and what impact has it had on your performance?
We’ve embedded AI into daily workflows across teams and products. Engineers now save up to four days per month by using AI for code development and test automation. Our focus is on eliminating repetitive tasks and boosting efficiency.
AI tools also streamline our data analysis, reducing the time it takes to review NPS scores and customer feedback, driving faster, smarter decision-making.
What impact have Donald Trump’s tariffs had on your business? How has this affected your view of the United States as a place in which to invest?
As a SaaS company, US-related tariffs didn’t impact on our business directly, but they contributed to broader economic uncertainty and impacted some of our customers. This led to some buyer hesitancy. The US remains our main market, where we expect to see continued strong growth in the years ahead.
What is the single most important piece of advice you would offer to a less experienced entrepreneur?
Talk to your customers, early, often and with open ears. Truly learn to listen. Real insight comes from understanding their problems, not assuming them.
This helps you validate before you build, and stay obsessed with the problem, not your idea. Everything – product, growth, funding – gets easier when you’re solving something real that people care about and see value in.
David Corcoran, Soltec
David Corcoran is CEO of Soltec (Ireland), which operates in the recycling industry. Established in 1994, Soltec started as a small, Mullingar-based company employing two people focused on treating solvent waste from local garages and body shops.
It now services a broad client base drawn from the pharmaceutical, education, medical and automotive sectors. It employs 31 people and has increased its capacity to recycle and recover hazardous waste.
It specialises in providing environmentally sound and sustainable solutions in the recycling of hazardous waste materials that would ordinarily be incinerated or shipped for treatment outside Ireland.
What vision/light-bulb moment prompted you to start-up in business?
Soltec was originally established by my father Michael in the early 1990s. The company started off by recycling local waste produced in garages and body shops around Westmeath.
In recent years, and in light of a growing understanding of the negative environmental impact of waste in our economy, we embarked on an expansion programme, increasing our capacity by 300 per cent, to service our growing clientele in the pharma industry.
Describe your business model and what makes your business unique.
We take what’s used and often dangerous and transform it into something that’s truly sustainable. Soltec’s business model echoes the principles of the circular economy, delivering real and practical solutions to Ireland’s waste-generation problems.
What was your ‘back-to-the-wall’ moment and how did you overcome it?
Without a doubt, the biggest challenge our company faced was the financial crisis in 2008. I came on board during that time and the financial position of the company was worrying.
To address this, I reviewed all existing revenues and outgoings to maximise the efficiency of the company, and also seek opportunities to grow our customer base to increase revenue.
Thankfully, after a difficult few years, our financial position radically improved, allowing us to invest in expanding our facilities and services.
What moment/deal would you cite as the ‘game changer’ or turning point for the company?
A key turning point for Soltec was the decision to invest in a new EPA-licensed facility in 2019.
This marked a departure from being a business that focused largely on local clientele to one with ambitions of playing a critical role in the waste recycling infrastructure, both nationally and internationally.
To what extent does your business trade internationally and what are your future plans/ambitions?
We source waste within Ireland but the products we generate from that waste are sold internationally.
For example, our company takes in residual waste solvents that arise from the production of life-saving medications, medications used to treat conditions such as diabetes.
We purify this waste using our unique advanced distillation technology and from this we produce nail polish remover, hand sanitiser and paint thinners, which we then can sell to our international customer base.
What are you doing to disrupt, innovate and improve the products or services you offer?
Soltec is unique in Ireland as it is the only waste management company that recycles waste solvents. We have been providing this service to our ever-increasing clientele since 1994.
In recent years, we have invested heavily in our facilities, increasing our capacity and improving our process. This investment, along with harnessing new technologies, allows us to identify new restorative and regenerative methods in transforming hazardous waste.
How are you deploying AI in your business and what impact has it had on your performance?
There are a number of beneficial impacts that AI and technology can bring to enhance the services we provide. For example, our new facility is controlled via Scada from a central station, which allows us to safely operate the site while also monitoring our energy and water usage. This information enables us to make more informed decisions.
We have also invested heavily in recent years in a platform that automates our waste-tracking and reporting system. This type of system provides our clientele and regulators with real-time information on the status of various waste materials being processed across our site.
What is the most common mistake you see entrepreneurs make?
I think a common mistake entrepreneurs make is overlooking the importance of delegation and the need to build a strong team that believes in their vision for the company.
It’s essential to focus on including and developing a committed team, as this not only drives the success of the business but also allows others to share in the achievements of reaching your collective goals.
What is the single most important piece of advice you would offer to a less experienced entrepreneur?
From our perspective, much of our success can be attributed to strategic investment in our plant and equipment. The projects we’ve undertaken in recent years have been technically complex and carried significant risk.
