130: All the Things You’re Searching For | Barry Darmody and Search4Less

0:06 Hey there, I'm Pete Townsend, and this is money, never sleeps. We look inside the minds of entrepreneurs and at the crossover of startups and a prize Finance technology and Life, as We Know It, This episode of money. Never sleeps is sponsored by Pat fintech the training partner. The demystifies fintech and digital Finance for financial services professionals on the show. This week, we've got buried Darmody, hi, I'm Barry Darmody. And I'm CEO search for lesson and key sharing. His story on the life experiences that were the Catalyst for him, becoming a start-up founder getting the search for Less product to Market. In the early days, Keeping the Faith through the lean years. Making yourself Expendable through building a great team and connecting the dots of life through his passion for problem solving. All right here on money, never sleeps. In the run-up to you, founding your first startup tell me about what were some of the formative experiences from your time, with ifg, to Rotary, Brady to MDA and then back to ifg that were the Catalyst for UConn is saying, alright, I'm just going to do this sure.

1:18 So I've been lucky enough in my career that most of the business I've been involved in. I was involved in earnest. H. So when I joined I have G in. 96, I joined a company called lowland guy, was the third employee was a very Innovative product tried to do a lot of what I do today, just as a way ahead of its time, it was 1996 and we were trying to sell none and I'm information platform and the challenges we encountered were solicitors didn't have internet. So we had to provide the internet, we had to provide the connection, the modem, the computer, and a lot of cases. So just it was just way ahead of its time, it was a great product. Act was a great idea and it was a very strong leadership there, but Jesus mentioned services company and this was third.com play. So in 2001, 2002 when the.com bust happened, they kind of lost interest in driving that business and a lot of leadership actually left.

2:14 And I was left there with an option of maybe going back into mainstream employment or giving a go for six months. And I didn't like the idea of going back into mainstream and So I meant mainly because I was probably being paid more than I was worth and mainstream employment where I was. So I decided to give it a go for six months, we rationalize the business. We actually discontinued the side of the business that I was working in, which was the consultancy side, which funny enough is the cash card for the business and I focused on the information products. And at the time there was good, few law search firms in Dublin. And we spoke to Roger Brady who were just after been taken over by an entrepreneurial culture, So if Grant and he was looking at, developing out that the Roger, Brady propositions.

2:59 So he and I met he bought the business are 75% stake in the business from ifg and part of the deal was I went with it. So we joined Roger Brady and that was a very clerical organization. So there was a lot of paperwork going on there. There was a 60 or 70 staff, delivering clothes and searches campaign, searched every day. And then we had this technology business. So my goals there were to kind of bring the technology To the workflow within the Roger. Brady day-to-day operations, which we did. But on top of that, we acquired a few little searches around of them that were sort of family-owned, but they were, you know, coming to end the life in terms of the family ownership. So we acquired a few of those.

3:40 We integrated them and we grew market share through that. And then in 2006, we both to businesses in Northern Ireland from both sides of the divide, and we Amalgamated them, which is probably the most rewarding. His of my career kind of overseeing that the joining of those two businesses and overcoming quite a few challenges. Not just hate your related, but it was a very, very rewarding experience and we modernized those two businesses that became rolling UK. It's still in existence today. Can I can I say that I remember this? Sure. Yeah. You know, I do remember this. I remember you telling me about the experience of bringing together businesses from both sides of that divided in Northern Ireland.

4:21 Yeah it was it was it was it was a Thing the very first day, I went up there, I was petrified of must admit about the, the reaction I would get. This is the first time we brought the two businesses from their independent offices and put them into one office. Mmm. And I remember going up into train thinking, like, what I'm going to do, I'm going to experience here and I arrived and got into the office and I just ran for the management office. I just sat at my desk. When what are we going to do? How am I going to engage these people? And there was a deadly silence in the place. And I thought it was because of Me but is actually they were the conditions, they worked under and I kind of went out and these are all young, early 20s workers and young people. And I can you guys have a radio here and then response was oh you know, we don't really rather you values radio bright and I ran around to our guests that 11 pounds on a radio brought up. Why tuned in tuned in today event because it was the only Channel.

5:17 I knew I could get or how to get and I said, look, the rule is whoever's in first chooses the station and that's been a rule that we Had in all of the businesses I've grown since. So there's no railing about the radio station everyday whoever's in first chooses, that's it. So I spent three weeks modernizing that business and as I say we could team building exercises and and we did a lot of trying to break down the barriers and, you know, by and large by the end of the three weeks, we've gone from a very, very paper-based system to and fully automated hired, a manager up there to kind of help us role in the business and I believe she still there. Awesome. That was 2008. So he got a job out of that the end through the years at one point. I remember you saying something about the number of businesses that you had integrated or that had been acquired during those first seven eight years of this Century, buying businesses but driving that experience into how you think about your own startup that must have been quite helpful. I certainly learned a lot to the due diligence phase at that time.

6:24 Certainly buying the businesses and negotiating as party to all of those discussions. The empathy that's required to convince the vendor that, you know, their child is going to be looked after and their reputations is going to be remain intact. And they were important things when we were making this Acquisitions, because a lot of these businesses were personal to the owners, particularly in Northern Ireland to owners, you know, they struggled with the thoughts of getting out and they just knew The timing was right, there was a lot of consolidation happening in the UK at the time there was home information pack was initiative that the cook Tory government had been pushing in terms of the vendor being responsible for the information and a conveyance, and the parts you being able to rely on that. So I got a huge amount of experience to time being involved in that initiative and understanding it. And and that came about because in 2006 we entered into negotiations with mdaa which is a multinational firm. Based out of Vancouver, who were buying up property information companies all over Europe and they had floated on the stock exchange in the back of their space missions business, which was they built, the Canada arm, which is the arm that comes out of the old space shuttle and they moved into building satellites.

7:41 And then they saw a correlation between selling satellite images and owning the land information them. And they had a big business in the US where they were able to do lots of Justman by calculations on the backup location. So if building was destroyed in a tornado, they could work out based on localized information. What the cost of of rebuild was and there are very big in that space with a company called Data quick. They bought a few businesses in the UK and in Germany. And one of them is they bought in the UK was a company called Miller, but Bryce, which is the biggest law search company. In Scotland and men are Bryce. Had a reputation of the time for kind of mean regardless the kleenex of Blah searching.

8:25 So you know, if you didn't say going at the goes and search, you said go and get the medical research. So they were very strategic in the Acquisitions. They were making, then they came along and they targeted. Roger Brady, we did a deal. I became CEO virtue. Brady and I reported in 2nd a initio is they were going to get us a report into you know, Bryce but the chain strategy primarily because our technology was more advanced and I felt to be counterproductive for us too. It's kind of report in. They might lose that secret sauce that they already have in the, are required through us, because we were probably the largest law search firm at the time. And we had kind of, grown our market share but to fold, but we had reduced our overheads, through automation by a factor of four. So it was a good business model and truly true acquisition. That we grew rapidly and I was, I entered into that earn out, it was to urinate and at the end of their nose, I had a choice. My family was quite young and I'd worked really hard during their I've been in Vancouver for a week once every six weeks and you know, there was a couple of Milestones that I missed. I remember when we were working on the deal, you know, the morning of my, my second son's christening I was, I was working and I, you know, so that wasn't that wasn't a great work-life balance.

9:40 So I worked with the hearts of the two years and towards the end, mdaa were kind of indicating that the progression for me was UK and ultimately Vancouver. You know, this was a huge organization, billion-dollar turnover? Oh, yeah. Yeah, and it was a massive experience for me because I learned how multinationals work and I learned how to navigate the bureaucracy and I learned how to navigate, you know, decision-making. I mean, we had it read a situation where we were trying to rent a room in Belfast. I think it was like twenty thousand pounds a year, right? And there was nine levels of signing Authority for that lease. Wow. And the and he said agent Belfast, looking to hang on, what's this? All about bar? You know, why do we have this complication?

10:21 And like a but I don't know, I don't know why. Why? 20,000 that are the procurement vehicles of mncs. Yeah. Yeah. So all of that stuff, like I just sucked up and I really kind of enjoyed learning how those organizations work and put the reality was the travel didn't appeal, you know, International Travelers is great crack in the first four times. No, remember that period as well. That you were going to and on the airplane all the time. Yeah. And you know, you're trying to collect your air miles and then you're, you know, it's weird stuff its way. It's tough how it works and how people get obsessed with her miles and what flights. But what aircraft are on will I get bumped up to business class and it's just, it was just horrendous stuff that didn't really fill up my boat in the end and I got an opportunity to go back to I've G.

11:08 But they were one of our biggest clients in in Rochester. Brady. So I had maintained relationships there but the timing of that moves with Shopkin. I remember one of the first things it did we actually had a very good deal with the number of lenders around town where they were they were Packaging. Services. And I remember, I went into one of the Landers is going to say, you know, we need to renegotiate the price here because we're kind of below-cost selling and I think I know any what we're giving you volume and I said yeah. But, you know, I think everybody should be paying what it costs at the very minimum, you know. So they didn't react very well to that negotiation tactic. But six weeks later the whole Market, the whole Market collapsed know. I remember back at that time.

11:50 You told us, you said Pete, if there's Any time in history in Ireland that you don't want to buy a house, it is right now, and what did I do? You gonna go out? Yeah, the time I couldn't understand that, you know, and we did the numbers didn't add up and on the market collapsed and I went in to kind of modernize, few of the I have G mortgage related businesses to going into crisis management to going into rationalizing, a business to going into managing shareholder relations. She were 50% shareholder in business and you know all of that stuff. No, my experience locally at the time, helped a great deal.

12:32 But all of that stuff was complicated. It wasn't what I wanted to do with life. I wanted to go out and build products and make processes better, you know, to use my skill set to make life easier for people to be more efficient in delivering them product. But that was two or three years of had, a really was difficult, you know? And it was, it was hard. One of the first things I did when I joined, I have G. ABS. I met every single member of Staff reporting. A ninja my division. One on one and there was no agenda. It was just a Tegrity, think it is business and it took three weeks, it was a very, very informative process at the time, it was a good process. They haven't seen anything like that and just get a sense of well, what's working, what's not working in the business? And then, you know, three or four months later, I'm setting up a time saying, hey, we've got to move some jobs here, it was difficult, you know that that's never an easy thing to do and it wasn't something that may I suggest she's a you know, you always, you always remember these things that are hard things to do. one of the things in order to try and make the best of a bad situation was we decided to set up in sure if less and at the time we set it up in Dingle and the reason we chose dingo was there was called Center facilities there who their Arsenal, Guild had a initiatives where you you too broad industry to the area, you could evade of Grants, they had lost a big contractor that year, who we should devastated the region along the west coast and, you know, I'm From Carrie and I wants to get and give a little bit back so we chose that as location.

13:58 The facilities were perfect. We had an air-conditioned server room which is probably the only recognition ceremony Roman the Dingle Peninsula and which we subsequently sublet. But we let Rackspace to kind of cover our costs and the facilities were good, the staff for good. We also sold Insurance products are scale guy, which I was personally very proud of and and that is something fascinating to experience when you walk on. The the sales floor getting very sleepy. Yes. Oh. So one of the initiatives that the uterus grants is that you would know, revive the language and the language of play an important role in your business model that we were capable of selling Insurance products via Oscar Vega in those great just so everyone knows as well.

14:41 Go for those listening in the u.s. is the Irish language or Gaelic, as it may be referred to in the United States of America. Correct? Yes Gaelic and we you know they did that from Stars up. It was a Great experience again. And one of the things that I learned through that experience, was that, you know, we brought a lot of Technology, open source technology to the equation. And as, you know, failure is an orphan and success has many fathers. And when the business started to kind of develop a little bit of success, he got a bit of interest from peers who kind of wanted to help with maybe the future direction of the business and that was something that I felt. You know, what I've done? I've been I've been around the block now, I've done this a few times and maybe it's time.

15:23 I did it for South. And that was the Catalyst. You know, I really enjoyed my time in Dingle but I felt that, you know, particular the hell came along, I felt that I was better off if I if I did the next thing on my own and for myself and for my family. So I made the decision, I'd always resisted the urge to set up something on my own primarily because it's was, I felt had a duty to provide a home. And the conditions were never really write this particular year. I had an idea one of the businesses we We sold to Errata Brady back in. 2002 was a business called company information direct and it's still going and it was the first version of search for us.

16:04 Say bye-bye, I developed that system at a couple of other guys from startup. It does a lot of what search for us does and I would say, now it kind of search plus we've learned from all the mistakes that we made in that particular product and and we and we got it away. But the real Catalyst was I use that information that company information on a regular. Business. And I use it in ways that it probably doesn't get used. So for example, I would use it for networking. I would, I would learn more from pulling down a set of accounts or looking at a director's past history, then you would get on LinkedIn or you find out. I don't know if it's not about people when you use the service. And that's what I used to use company data for and one of the things that that was consistent in 2011, which was the year I decided to ride going to do is set, was that every Monday morning when my Count in my provider. Got down to below 10, 10, euro.

16:58 I'll get a phone call. So I get a phone call. Hey you need to top up your account ship. Look awesome. You know what I only talked about six weeks ago you know this is your this is ridiculous. I certainly think you know nothing has really changed in this industry since I left I didn't feel I had any obligation to MD at this stage on any non-competes or anything. So I kind of went, you know, what? CID is still the same the main competitor everybody talks about knows about is still the same. There's lots of He's here to actually do it better. I'm the one thing that struck me at the time was that when we sold CID to Archer Brady, and we sold it again 2nd, a four years apart during due diligence, I realized the average income per customer was the same.

17:40 And that's where I came up with my price point on. I went, we can do this, we can do it better, we can do an all-in model and you're not worried about having to type up your account, or you're not going to get that phone call anymore. And that's how Ow, search for Less was born and then we started to think about how can we make it better? Tapping in the industry and we found out things like the cro had apis, that nobody was really availing of. We started to connect to those apis, which meant we were getting information in real time. And we built this product. I designed it. I hired a guy to help me develop this and I subsequently brought him out of the business. He did it with a private Equity part salary basis, it originally. The search for Less was born.

18:25 So tell us, tell us about search for less and what it is. So search for Less is an online company. Information platform that allows users to access any publicly available information about directors, shoulders, and companies and businesses. So adding it's publicly available. Good bad or indifferent. Appears on the platform. We are gate the data. We package it in such a way that it's easy to navigate. We produce reports and we do it for a fixed. Annual, see the speed of the services was the key thing and initially when I designed it and we were figuring out, what how are we going to present this? How we going to make it easy to understand, easy to use? We have no idea that, you know, what the market is. Well, served by the incumbents, there's really no point in trying to disrupt and my idea was look, we go out with, will pitch it out. 150 Euro, will try and mop up 5,000 smes and we live happily ever after.

19:21 And the idea was that we look big businesses. In this chapter service providers using this business service funds using this information, why can't I see means use it and that was that was the idea that was the initial plan and what happened was I showed it to an accountant in town called. Brian Mercy. I was, I was, I was hiding out in his, a shock. I hope he doesn't mind me name dropping him. Yeah. And he came up and he said, hey, what are you doing here? And she's I said, I'm developing this product. He had a look and he said, can I have access? And I said sure two hours later. He came up to my the office. Again, and he said, what? I'm going to say, two things to you. First thing he said is, you have really got something here. This is very, very good. And the second I'm gonna say to you is it's too cheap, okay? And we're out about that for a while and he felt that she got a wood 95 So eventually I can see the point. Now, of course I was being precious and say, oh, I really thought about this hundred fifty or priced. How did you come up with the one you see? Originally when we did the due diligence that was the average income per customer on CID.

20:21 So I just thought, you know, that that has to be the number If we go out with this, so from there, it was introduced to a networking group and you know those eleven different accountancy firms that that networking group, all 11 signed up with us pretty quickly. After that and ground, Torrington became the first sort of top-tier accountancy firm that signed up and they presented us with our first kind of real dilemma in the first three weeks. Which was, you know, we're going to go with this but we need you to sign up 500 users and we kind of, how are we going to sign up for every Users. Just you just me and a developer here. We're actually at the web Summit. Okay, so we need to figure out how we're going to click smart. So we came up with the universal sign up that staredown we invite Everybody by email we get a link and that's it. We don't have any admit, that's how we did it. So we push the problem back to the user and that is how everybody signs up.

21:16 I'm just went on from there, kind of truce ass, right? Sure. Yeah. Is that you're up there? You're online. You, well, obviously there's a whole way to direct potential users potential corporates to your website, but then once they're on it's completely self-service 100%. And The key thing for us at this point was, you know, we didn't really understand that and we were just making it up as we went along. But what I understood was that if we listen to our customers, we're going to be successful here and we didn't anticipate the reaction that we got from the I see Grant Thornton or Brian Murphy and Summer's murkier and that kind of caught us by surprise, we kind of reacted to that very very quickly and change the business model. Little bit added in extra reports that they had requested to be prime torrent and we evolved kind of with them with the but they became great refers. Like this became the new kid on the Block and everybody could see the value.

22:17 Add and you know when when people started to use it they could see wow this is this is impressive. And the top just kicked off from there. I'm like I would reckon about half of the clients that we sign up for referred by somebody else. And we're even seeing Trends now where people have moved between Farms or move to New farms and the first thing to do is but what I mean you don't have search. Plus we need to have this. This is an essential to. I just grows from there and like we 19, top top, 20 accounts firms. Now we've got, I think five of the top seven and all firms with most of the banks at this stage, we started to move this year into in Into we've met API proposition there as well and that's becoming fairly busy for us now. We've couple of firms coming in from the UK. Following brexit, couple herbs Canadian firms. Now taking a look at us as well in terms of the apis and had access today time.

23:08 We're very involved in some of the bigger reg tech companies and am L companies as well as a kind of using our data. So we've evolved you really have no I mean and you know just bring it back to that company information data. Back to, you know, 2002, like you said, that problems always been there that whether it's law, firms, accountants, Banks, anybody that needs information on the companies that they are bringing in as their customers or those that are, I won't even try to understand the legal side of it right for how much information you actually need to get but you know that problems always been there. But the technology at your disposal to use just keeps getting better and better through the years to make things easier.

23:53 For customers for corporates, for businesses to get company information. Yeah, absolutely and fire.com or one company that abused us since they started their own proposition. And, you know, they've been very in a bit of, they use our data for account signup. They use Irish and UK data. In fact for can sign up, we haven't seen that replicate across other Irish Banks. We're seeing it with the likes revolution in 26. Now, they're fairly slick onboarding systems, but I know you've had this experience but when it goes wrong, oh my God, does it go wrong? He does. So enough said about that one, but we're seeing that a lot of say, I know is coming at us. Requesting this data, people are doing my sector analysis, we're doing a lot of theta on that side and because we've enhanced the zero data, with other bits of information, like, judgments, and financial information, we're providing, and we've been doing 56 years.

24:49 Providing a really strong data set. We just started a version two. To build about four weeks ago, where, you know, in the back of the zero, digital transformation, which is ongoing, we're seeing a lot of opportunity here to take it to the next level and to develop further. And this again comes back to the key of our growth and our success which is listen to our clients. And what I think, one of the most rewarding things and we get this feedback from clients Primetime is actually when they make suggestion, we react to it, we weigh it up and if it's a good suggestion will deploy it and we get a lot of positive feedback because of that. And And we find that that particular product search for that is, you know, it looks after itself. It is truly software as a service and we started.

25:32 Now just now to go back to the smes to say, look, this is data, you need to be using in your day to day and, you know, we have a whole story around. Ys me should be using this in in all of their interactions with customers with creditors with competitors buried, try to focus on. How do we make it easier for them to engage with the data? Yeah, there are so many different Use cases for search for Less. You know, in terms of a project I was working on, like you said, figure out a sector and what's going on there. And I know I introduce you to somebody who said, listen to be great if we could have this API feed for this, and it's wonderful that you're doing that now, how many markets are you covering with search for Less? How many different countries are you covering out?

26:13 We've got, we've got the full world data set, but we don't really push that we're very strong in our in UK. What we find very often, is it somebody's looking for a set of accounts in France. And you give them a set of accounts from France during the French register. The first thing to say Well they're not translated well that's because they're French and you know because the Irish state is so good, we find the expectation. Is that all other jurisdictions will be insane and you know we try to tease out with people what they need the data for what they actually need and very often all the needed certificate, good standing, which we can get by going to the local register and give them a bonded. Search that says, you know, we've searched this particular register and such a date and it's this He exists, it's a good standing and that tends to satisfy most use cases.

26:58 Because very often, like, you can absolutely get a set of French counts translated into English. It's going to cost like 800 kids and their companies that do that. Yeah. And Google translate will probably do a great pretty good job but that's not something that you'd run into the high court with single is. Check this out, you know. So there's all of these kind of complications around providing international data and we use the big guys as well. You know, we've access some of relationships with, like, study abroad student. But again, the data is only as good as what the database has soaked a very often. You might spend a hundred and Dun & Bradstreet report, and they can only give you what's in that jurisdiction and it might not meet expectations. So there's just we taken a position on that as a service to say look, we're expert.

27:41 We've agents all over the world we can get you what you want but let's have a conversation first about what you want and why you want it and see what's the best way to get it to you without cost in the earth and and that tends to work really well for us. But we've huge plans with UK data. A lot of pressure from existing customers to try and give their peer firms in the UK, the same sort of service that we did. They get here in Ireland, we shied away from it that before now because you know there's a couple of good incumbents there, there was one company that started around the same time, both due to the gone through a series of funding. And I always felt, you know what? They've got big Deep Pockets that I want to compete there. I don't want to. I don't want to go over with UK and, you know, Global success.

28:21 I've had on a white elephant. Chase. So yeah, we I took my time and went up. Let's see how we can bring a different product to the market and we think we figured that out finally. And I believe that with the diversion to that we're doing for Ireland, we can easily pork that to the UK and hopefully would have success there. This episode of money never sleeps and sponsored by Pat fintech demystifying fintech and digital Finance for financial services professionals. Pat fintech enable Financial Services professionals to transform their capabilities into the digital age with dedicated virtual training programs, geared towards those that can develop deliver and monitor optimally customized user experiences, balance by appropriate, governance, control and oversight to learn more about Pat fintech.

29:10 Go to money. Never sleeps. Leaps that IE / p80, fin text. And how do you balance? Obviously, this opportunity to build a great platform, you've scaled it locally in your home country, you're looking at the next country, right? Or not looking at the next country but you're getting strong demand from the, you know, from your current customers. Like you said to be able to open up this type of experience to their UK entities. How do you balance this opportunity to go? Well yeah, you know what? Will expand into the UK? Perhaps through a deal in buying a huge amount of data, we could tackle the US, right?

29:52 How do you balance that with some of the original ideas that got you to launch search for Less in the first place which is being local and being, you know, being here? You know, you've got these Global perhaps a global ambition, tempered by The Family, Man. Our Guest, the one thing that has changed is that I've built a pretty strong team. And it's not just me and I have found that I'm sort of surplus to requirements in most days in the office. That's nice. Yeah, so I kind of I'm trying to find my new Destiny or my new journey and you know, I'm the Overflow guy.

30:32 So if something is going wrong, I've developed technical skills over the last few years as well. So I released my first software patch from start to finish their weeks ago. Yeah, it s pretty pretty proud of myself. Now That the developers, it took me four hours. They were they reckon they would take them 15 minutes. So maybe I was being a bit too pedantic with the patch but anyway it's something I learned. So where I found myself in the business now is kind of going from division to division, making sure that we're optimal in everything we're doing and just letting the team then kind of get on with it. And over the last six months, I'm finding I'm spending more and more time thinking about new product ideas which is where I want to be. Working out how we're going to develop those. So we you know we just started hiring and developers and Freelancers and I'm starting to kind of focus on that side and then I think I'm on the distribution side, a couple of years ago.

31:29 I hired Karma Nelson who has worked with me since the lolling days in 1996. So she's kind of worked me in different businesses and after her karma came on board, bearing in mind, we're going seven or eight years. Now, the revenue just doubled in the first Of months of her being on board with us. Wow. So like I realize as opposed to me kind of running around, you know, isn't it? Great brought in a professional business development person and the success is there, I don't know if I would go further myself, then the UK and we get a lot of queries for information from the US. And the reality about the u.s. is that most Companies Incorporated in Delaware. You know it's very light touch in terms of the information that you can gather and go to the state Department's and all that kind of stuff but it's just It's so disparate and Dun & Bradstreet, and Experian have a real Stranglehold on the value-add in that space or the perceived value. Add in that space, so it's a difficult one to get into. Now, we cooperate or we are Co-op editors with Dun & Bradstreet and Experian here in the Irish Market in the UK market.

32:35 And the relationship is pretty good. But, you know, I think as we develop our product offering, we're probably going to have to figure out where places in that market like we could go all the way up to cry. Some and personal credit but you might bite the hand that feeds you in terms of some of the data feed. So like we've got we've good collaboration going on at the moment and for me the eyes are certainly on the UK. Probably not further afield and that's something. I think that we would our bit of experience with. We would probably try and solve the distribution problem over there. But I would anticipate that because of the client base that we have here, that the referrals would probably slow. Well, I think we have already ready-made Market, if you know what I mean.

33:16 We we can probably manage pretty well and keep the balance going, you know? Okay I get it and I kind of just thinking more deeply about this knowing you bury in that you know, one of the phrases that keep coming to mind a lot over the last couple of months, with a few things I've been working on, is solving adjacent problems. In this was Jason Bates from who was one of the former founders of Manzo. And he spent a bit of time with him back in 2017, 2018, with 11 FS And it just rubbed off on me right in that it's taking this whole, Eric Rice, Lean Startup model of building a product getting into your customers hands as quickly as possible and getting all that customer feedback. And like you said, you get an idea from a customer. You think about it, you weigh it up and you know what? You deploy it in a few days, right? And you get that going.

34:08 And then you try to figure out through, getting closer to those customers, what are the other problems, the adjacent problems that you can solve l've kind of weighing all this up, knowing you. Like I said, I kind of see you as being far, more interested in solving adjacent problems for your customers rather than going out and building a Global Behemoth here, right? Yeah. So we've got a couple of new products that that were looking at and we decided to stay with the for Less family, so one of them is start for that. Switch is the corporation's platform, which makes it easy for end users and practitioners profession petitioners to incorporate companies. Data gatien that which we can achieve using search for this data and it just reduces a lot of steps that you have to follow by engaging directly with the cro.

34:56 And the most exciting product that we have, which is about to launch. In the next few weeks is, hey Char em for less and following following covid consequences of coal, particular for an SME, like us, you know, we were all very good at the first phase. You know, keeping in touch with the staff and doing the zoom calls, but people are so fatigued with it, that I started with. Worried about, you know what? What do we lost here in all of us and our, we properly organized in terms of our policies and in terms of our procedures and safety for staff, and what are the new rules? And I kind of went, you know what, I'm normally pretty good at this stuff, but this stuff is moving so quickly and changing so fast that they became bit concerned with the whole thing. And I said to the most mean thousands of businesses out here, worried about this whole Space. So we designed horm for less and it's straightforward platformer, again it's fixed.

35:46 Service where you pay your annual sold. And at the very minimum, the very entry level product is a employee handbook, which will have all of the appropriate policies in place for working from home for health and safety in the office to make sure that, you know, you have all of the appropriate documentation in place, but it also records employee interaction. So, if you issue a new policy, the system will record whether the employee has read the See, whether they've accepted the policy and then if they haven't, or if they have Italy guide, the business owner true, what actions they need to take to make sure the policy is understood by and large. We have six or seven similar products that were better in design that, you know, we're trying to roll out with this for last family and we're trying to decide whether they belong in the SME environment or whether they belong in the professional service provider environment, fashion service provider has been very good to us, and the amount of me, Rose, we got from them.

36:48 We're reading trying to solve problems for them. Particularly can't side Cossacks. I'd help them with their workflows and try and improves their efficiencies through technology. And that's, that's where we learn to suck for less. And there's a couple of more like that coming down the tracks. All right. Interesting. You know, it think about this whole journey bury, one of the things you said to me in 2016, when I was launching my business was Pete. It's going to take you twice as long to hit the targets, you think? Going to hit and it's going to cost you twice as much to get there. You kind of dance through those nine years, right between launching search for less and now, and, you know, obviously you've built a successful business to this stage, but it wasn't an easy Road. No, no.

37:36 So, we bootstrapped and when I say we, I mean, my wife's think she suffered the most, it was a very difficult, the first three years of very difficult, it was to occasions where I didn't have enough money. You to pay staff and I had to ask your staff to wait a day or two until some checks came in and they were difficult times and I always checked myself at those times too. You know, you're going to just remember this when you're successful you must remember this human nature is to forget pain but they were difficult times. We got true them certainly didn't happen. As quickly as I thought, I thought within a year and have 5,000 SM. He's signed up to search for less and I'd be kicking back watching my kids grow. Grow up on the sideline shouting and roaring at them and didn't happen like that.

38:20 Nonetheless, we're in a phase now in the business where we're trying to figure out the next growth phase and one of the things I've identified, as I'm very, very strong agile Starship, you know, leading by example, we're at a point now, where I got to step back and let the culture evolved and that that the next generation of managers come in and put their footprint on the business. And and in that I've been very lucky with people that I The bench Carmen or you're on. Nick has been with me again, since Roger Beatty days. Tina, joined us as a wedding when we set up the company seven or eight years ago, and she's grown from college, graduate into operations director and, you know, it's becoming their business every day as we grow. I'm not involved in the day-to-day as much as I used to be anymore.

39:06 As I say, I'm the utilitarian guy that they go to if there is something done that surface to everybody else on the day, the team we've been very lucky with the team. We've had a high rate Tension rate with staff. And you know, I remember in the early days, I remember I cast one Carson an evening at around. 4:00 wound. Agent was expecting me back at the office and the following day. I sat down with her and I said, hey, you know, I kind of forward you to take the test here. I need you to work, if you don't want to work, no problem, cause she's very good. How to strike a conversation with her and the next day she came in. He said look, I don't want to take the piss out of you. I love working here but I'm just bored with it. So I'm going to go on and do something else and I told You know what? I learned a lesson.

39:47 There she learned lesson there. The key thing for me was I was straight with her. I acted quickly and I'd like to think that everybody who works within our organization would say that about us that were an honest organization were candid were transparent. We put our hands up when we get it wrong and we lead, by example, but most importantly, we back each other and I'm wearing a good team and I wouldn't be anywhere today without got team and that's it, that's critical thing for me, you know, there's There's a lot of luck involved in this story but at the key thing for me was getting those people to trust that I knew what I was doing and that this was going to come good and none of those people caramel make Lena key people today. None of those people were overpaid when they joined, you know, in fact you know, a lot of them probably took pay cuts to come and help me with this journey. You know, I believe we've addressed that now and then and everybody is appropriately compensated. At we're on a new phase in the businesses aside and I quit. Thing for me is realizing the startup phase is probably coming to an end.

40:50 So I'm going to go off and do what I enjoy doing, which is building new products and hopefully, the business is strong enough and I believe it is because we didn't have explosive growth. We certainly have had high growth in the last two years but you know, slow and steady for the first five or six years. And then you know the last couple years with our new product and key. It kind of took off a bit and we've got a lot of innovation in that particular space. But you know, When I look at my career firms that the started up around the same time we started up, you know, I went to the web Summit night or Speed network was meeting an angel, so like I was very apprehensive, right? That's very apprehensive about talk to anybody about my great idea. When you know we was actually just speed networking. What year was that in 12 2010?

41:37 The other thing is like, you know, you're queuing up to meet these angels and so on are younger than you and you're like the old geezer, the back of the queue there at all the kids are up there. Get their Chip kind of gone. No, I look like a grandfather and this environment. So, so there's lots of learnings along the way and I guess the point of making is that we didn't try and grow too quickly. We didn't over promise and under deliver and I think we're better for today. We took it steady and we got to where we are and like there isn't a day I wake up and I go, geez, I hope there's no garage today, you know, because I'm so grateful for where we are. But I know now that this is in good hands and that doesn't necessarily mean my hands. It's in all of our hands and we're all capable of more all All the good at what we do individually.

42:18 All right? And if there's going to be one thing that could happen over the next few years that could make the difference between success and utter failure. What do you think it would be? I'm always worried about - change and can't. So we might and and some office might just go, you know, we don't need law searching in the whole conveyancing process. But like we carry out a planning search for every conveyance that takes place that we got on our on our debt. This 56 things, we check For a planning, search for a property. It's complicated and if we get one of them wrong, it could be fatal for the purchase of the property or down the line. And that's always something that, you know, I like to tell people is we try and do a better than everybody else so we try and do it more thoroughly than everybody else. And that that's not to say that our competitors don't do it, thoroughly.

43:05 It's to say that we're trying to push the, we're trying to raise the bar in this stuff and I get that, I get that. And it's like if you see a process that doesn't work, Really well or that there's some gaps in it because either the Technologies old school or the approach that people are taking aren't the best but then if you can go all the way down through the entire process and say, how are we going to wrap technology around every single step along the way? You've kind of deconstructed that completely and you know, every single Gap in every single hole and then by trying to use technology to solve that problem. You know what? If you have to go offline with something, the problem hasn't been Right.

43:48 So just by that focus and that discipline to get down to every single key part of the process, you are truly improving it by wrapping technology around it, if it is so possible to do it. That's the key thing you do. That's what keeps us awake at night. That's what you want to achieve. And the worst thing that can happen is, somebody might go, you know, we don't need this anymore. This isn't useful and all of a sudden, you know, the requirement is gone and probably won't happen in my lifetime. There's a lot of road ahead of us. In terms of modernizing conveyancing is definitely scope for improving that process was to say. You know, legislative change is probably the biggest fear.

44:28 I hey, I'm with you. I'm with you. And I when you mentioned you know that 2012 experience of being at web Summit and you know never taking outside capital or never taking VC money right or never never pursuing VC money and just realizing that this year, I think is the first year that you're on the fintech Ireland map was searched for less. And just the obviously the fintech Ireland map is a one-pager with all the logos on it of all the different fintech players at Ireland. All broken down into all the different categories, one of, which is Tech with search for Less right in there. What was your a wake-up point? That said, I'm going to do that or was it, you know, did someone find out about you? And said, we got to put search for Less up there.

45:10 Yeah, so I'm old school. So, you know, I haven't quite figured out the social media. Yes. Yeah. So yeah, we got a called say look, why aren't you guys out this? We love your products and I said, sure, I'm happy to go on ash. Awesome. I need to get better at that stuff. Probably to hire. Somebody is good at that stuff. Yeah yeah I'll let you know if I know somebody. That's the limitation. We just need to get better at that stuff. Sub promotion. Well do it under the radar. There's something to be said for building a successful business without figuring out social media. Yeah, yeah. Right. Or in sorry, let me see. So when you've got a product, it sells itself, you know what the hell do you need Twitter for? Right?

45:54 Yeah, so true, you know, and there's a number of conversations that I've lined up for this podcast with folks that have bootstrap businesses that have built it from scratch and it's a different approach and there's a book out there called small Giants businesses that just want to be really, really good at what they do. But not turn into a global Behemoth, right? This just not their ambition, they just want to be really good at what they do. Yeah. And it's Kate it's a key thing for me as well as you know, we maintain the culture. We're very agile. I go back to that nice for 20,000 pounds in Northern Ireland, that needed Nine signatures, you know, if you get too big, you just can't react to things like that, and I think that's our secret sauce, that, you know, a customer might make a suggestion to us in the morning and it could be there by close of business tomorrow, you know, and I like that. And that's what kind of, that's what gets my juices flowing. I get you, I get you.

46:48 And we'll listen, I definitely learned something about Barry Dermody. This evening. You know, we've been Pals for nearly 20 years. I never really connected the dots between all the different stops. Your career in different experiences into one story, that makes a hell of a lot of sense. So it's not a opening eye-opening and impressive to as well, Barry, tell us what's one thing that people wouldn't expect to know about you. I'm gonna probably tell you a couple of things that I'm sure. Some, this is who know me. Probably didn't know what is I mentioned earlier on, I'm from Carrie. Yeah, I was born in Dublin, but I grew up in kerikeri season ticket holder, I've got five, brothers and two sisters and about 18 months ago.

47:29 I've got a business conference. And I'm up to me, he was the keynote speaker and came up to me, he asked me about my arm and I was born with one arm. Yeah. And he proceeded to tell me another, a lot of people notice this, so I try to conceal it. I don't want it to become a thing in business and so he was being very, he's very perceptive and he told me that his daughter was just born with a similar defect and just wanted to know how I got on in life and I realized that in because I've never been able to kind of put my finger on why I think the way I think I texted my dad, my mom and I said, hey Noah times for just letting me be because of my siblings, they never treated me any differently because I've only got one arm. In fact, if anything they just said, you know, get on it. And that was the upbringing I had. And that's for me, is the essence of who I am and how I think, totally, I totally see that. That's it.

48:24 That's the one thing that is the one thing. No that makes so much sense. Yeah. And over the years kind of get my head around that that it that's deep. So awesome. Well Barry thanks so much. God's honest truth it's been a fantastic conversation really was looking forward to doing this tonight and you kind of you hit the ball out of the park tanks. He's got a pleasure, thank you. That does it for this week folks and thanks to Barry for opening up. His mind to help us figure out why he does. What he does. Lakes are on our website at money, never sleeps that IE.

49:04 So check us out online and subscribe to our money. Never sleeps newsletter as well. Also, thanks to Conan Brophy, from create sound for mixing and editing. This episode Conan is an excellent medium and to get in touch with when you're thinking about launching your own podcast. As for me I'm a founding partner at norio ventures Nam an early stage startup advisor and investor focused on fintech and digital assets. You'd like to talk to me about your business. It's drop me a voicemail on my never sleeps that I finally till next time. Thanks for listening. See you