That Great Business Show

E315: STILL IN SCHOOL. 300,000 DOWNLOADS. A $500,000 FUNDRAISE. AND NO PLANS FOR COLLEGE?

What the hell were YOU doing when you were 17?

Paddy Corcoran and Seán Cahill were supposed to be studying for their Junior Cert. Instead, they were scrolling through TikTok.
Then they had an idea. What if studying were as addictive as TikTok?

Fast-forward to today. Their Studytok app has recorded 300,000 downloads of its original global version, their TikTok account has attracted over 100,000 followers, and the lads are raising $500,000 to build an international education business.
Oh, and they're still in sixth year.

They actually took "time out" (eh, they bunked out) of school to come and talk to me. That's dedication. Or truancy. I'll leave that between them and their teachers.
From Rockwell College (where it all began) in Tipperary to investor meetings in New York, these two have already travelled further in business than many people three times their age. They're now at school in Dublin to keep the techbro mo going...

Their mentor and first investor, Erik Jentetics, introduced them to me. He spotted something rather special.
We talk about:
Turning a TY mini-company project into a serious technology business.
How one TikTok video attracted 2.3 million views.
Why Ireland is their testing ground before taking on America.
How AI can turn ordinary study notes into interactive quizzes and exam practice.
Why they're charging schools €25 per student per year.
Raising $500,000 while preparing for the Leaving Cert.
Why Paddy might never go to college (I told him he should, that should come back to haunt me) while Seán has his eye on engineering and robotics.
The extraordinary importance of mentors, investors and taking advice.

And, of course, who they'd hire in a heartbeat.
Their choices? A former Duolingo product chief and a brilliant American consumer-brand marketer. These lads have done their homework. Some of it, anyway.
They're looking for introductions to people in the American education sector. If you're connected to US schools, education technology or investors, have a listen and see if you can help them.
Studytok: https://studytok.com
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"I DON'T THINK THIS IS GOING TO END WELL."
That's not some social media doomsayer, a crypto enthusiast talking up his latest bet, or an internet financial guru selling a course.
That's Alan McQuaid - an economist with more than 30 years' experience in financial markets, who has worked with the Department of Finance, Merrion Stockbrokers and Cantor Fitzgerald Ireland.
A man who has seen a financial crisis or two.
And he believes we're heading for serious trouble.
"We're set up for a big fall."

On this edition of That Great Business Show, Alan joins Conall Ó Móráin for a conversation that becomes increasingly worrying as it unfolds.
We're talking about bond markets, but before you switch off at the very mention of the word BONDS, listen to this.
The bond markets affect the interest on your mortgage, the money available to build houses, the ability of businesses to expand, the security of jobs and, potentially, the value of your pension.
And Alan thinks the warning lights are flashing.
Government borrowing is getting out of hand. Inflation is proving troublesome. Investors are demanding higher returns to lend money. And the world's stock markets may not yet have understood the danger.
Alan thinks interest rates could go higher over the next 12 to 18 months. He fears that share prices could fall sharply. And he believes Ireland is much more vulnerable to an international financial shock than many people realise.
A podcast colleague who's in the process of buying a house and arranging a mortgage, was genuinely worried when he heard this discussion.
We can understand why.
Among the questions we ask:
Is another financial crash on the way?
Could mortgage rates jump again?
Why are the bond markets so nervous?
What happens if China or Japan starts selling more US government debt?
Are shares dangerously overpriced?
Could the data-centre borrowing boom become another problem?
Would Irish house prices tumble?
Should savers be looking at gold, silver, government bonds or bank deposits?
And does Ireland have a far bigger financial problem than the Government would like us to believe?
Alan has strong opinions. You may agree with him. You may disagree very strongly.
But you should hear what he has to say.
Because there's one thing he cannot tell us.
WHEN.
He believes a major fall is coming. But he doesn't know when.
And, as he cheerfully points out, if he did know, he'd be somewhere else making millions.
An extraordinary conversation with an economist who isn't afraid to say what he thinks.

Guest: Alan McQuaid, independent economist.
Connect: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alan-mcquaid-b6278884/
Hosted by Conall Ó Móráin.
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SIX people. More than 120 marts. Over €10 BILLION worth of livestock and related products traded through their platform.
And now they’re taking on America.

How on earth does a team that small build something that big?
Conall Ó Móráin meets Ciarán Feeney and Margaret Monaghan of MartEye, alongside Mary Rodgers, CEO of Galway’s PorterShed—the startup hub helping ambitious businesses make the connections to grow.
When Covid shut the marts, MartEye had TWO WEEKS to build a working product. Customers needed it. Customers paid. And they’ve been building ever since.
Today, farmers can bid from their children’s football matches. A buyer in New York can buy cattle for a farm in Tipperary.
And an unexpected enquiry from Missouri has opened the door to America’s sale barns.

Margaret’s first American trip? Turkeys, the Amish community and a table full of hunting rifles. Not quite the welcome she’d imagined.
We get into:
• Getting customers paying before the product was “fully baked”.
• The American opportunity: roughly 1,100 sale barns, according to Ciarán.
• Why MartEye has declined approaches from industry investors.
• The reality of supporting customers at THREE in the morning.
• Why PorterShed protects its engineers—and makes introductions count.
• The microphone mistake that broadcast Margaret into an Italian auction.
• And selling Michael O’Leary’s pedigree Angus cattle.
Customers. Cash. Control. And an Irish business with its eyes on a much bigger market.

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Frank Brennan failed his way through three years of mechanical engineering.
His words, not ours.

So he went to Australia, took a 100%-commission door-to-door sales job, learned to survive 50 rejections a day, saved 25 grand — and then spent the lot travelling.
He arrived home in Cork with 80p in his pocket.
Excellent financial planning.

Then he walked into an empty building on Cork's South Mall where a man was planning an innovation hub. There was no proper Wi-Fi. No desks. No team. No coffee dock. But there were 14 tonnes of IKEA furniture arriving the following morning.
Frank's response?
“I'll start tomorrow.”

That business became Republic of Work. The early years were brutal. Start-ups, Frank discovered, don't necessarily have any money. EY arriving looking for space for 30 people gave the business breathing room. Today Frank owns Republic of Work, has expanded it by another 7,500 sq ft and says one of the world's biggest gaming companies has taken its fifth floor on a two-year deal.
We talk sales, rejection, risk, remote working, Cork, community, the future of the office, why Irish businesspeople insist everything is “flying” when it absolutely isn't — and the person Frank would ultimately most like to hire.
His wife.
That Great Business Show — Real Business. Real lessons.
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EP 311: €130,000 Short of Becoming a Pilot. So He Built a €1m+ Business | Erik Jentetics

He was €130,000 short of becoming a pilot. So Erik Jentetics decided to become a businessman.
He was 17.

He and two school friends started by Googling how to buy a domain. They put €6,000 between them into Grafton Digital, knocked on doors looking for customers and, in one early pitch, confidently told a prospective client that yes, of course they charged VAT. They walked out and had to find out what VAT actually was.

Then came the less funny bit. At 19, Covid hit a business heavily exposed to hospitality. Contracts disappeared. Erik had to help lay off more than eight people. Then a whiteboard session changed the company. Web development was producing the best revenue per employee. They dropped much of the rest, hired three students to cold-call businesses and, at their peak, were taking about 50 website orders a week.
Then they moved into apps.
Then software.
By late 2022/early 2023, Grafton Digital had passed €1 million in gross revenue.

At 25, Erik bought a 39-year-old Irish technology business.
Now 26, with more than 50 people across his businesses, he wants to buy more Irish technology companies. His particular target: smaller, family-owned businesses whose founders are looking for an exit.
There's New York too. Erik explains why Grafton's first American expansion actually damaged its Irish business, why Irish executives need to “cut the blarney” when selling in the US, how he finances acquisitions, and why he doesn't want to raise an enormous fund and lose control.

He also says some of New York's most influential and wealthy families invested in him last year — and reveals that Grafton Digital has just signed a two-year digital transformation deal with a US corporation with more than 3,000 retail outlets, with another major airline customer announcement to come.
And his Hire in a Heartbeat?
John D. Rockefeller.
At 26.
Of course it is.
That Great Business Show, Episode 311. Real Business. Real lessons.
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