The Hidden Hustle Podcast

He went bust, lost everything, and started again from zero. Now he's built a €40 million ARR SaaS company with ambitions to hit €150 million in the next few years — and he's only getting started.

In this episode, we sit down with Tommy Kearns, founder of Xtremepush, to hear the remarkable story of building one of Ireland's most ambitious SaaS companies from a Dublin startup in 2014 to a 170+ person international business operating across Dublin, New York, São Paulo and Australia.

Tommy takes us through every twist in the journey: losing everything in property during the boom, rebuilding from scratch, burning a million dollars on a failed first attempt at the US market, and then going back again and this time making it work in a massive way.

We discuss:
What Xtremepush actually does and how it helps businesses like FanDuel, BetMGM, Fanatics, Bank of Ireland, Barclays, An Post, Laya and Three engage with their customers.

Tommy's early career in telecoms, the massive Digicel deal that took him to the Caribbean, and the painful lesson about staying in your lane.

How building apps for corporates through iMobile led to the idea behind Xtremepush and why Bank of Ireland became one of their first highly regulated customers in 2015 and is still a customer 11 years later.

The evolution from a push notification tool to a full customer engagement platform and whether that was always the plan or if the vision evolved along the way.

How Xtremepush achieved 100%+ revenue growth for two consecutive years and the "spray and pray" approach Tommy used to test markets before going all in.

The acquisition strategy that transformed the business: Emailcenter (email), Alchemetrics (customer data), Thunderbite (gamification) and Scrimmage (loyalty) and what Tommy has learned about what to look for in acquisitions, how to merge teams successfully, and when to build your own M&A capability.

Raising €27.8m from Grafton Capital and entering what Tommy calls "hyper-growth mode."

Burning a million dollars expanding into the US, the lessons learned, and how going back a second time paid off massively with the US now one of their most important markets.

Building and leading a team of 170+ people across Dublin, New York, São Paulo and Australia and the challenges of scaling culture and leadership across regions.

The launch of InfinityAI and XpertOS - Tommy's vision for where AI and agentic technology is taking CRM and customer engagement next.

Rewarding long-term employees with caps like sport 1 year, 5 year and 10 year milestones.

Tommy's brilliant answer on what jobs he'd recommend for kids in the AI era.

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Links & Resources:

Xtremepush: https://www.xtremepush.com/
Follow Tommy on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tommykearns/

What do you do after selling the company that changed your life?
In Part 2 of our conversation with Gavan Walsh, founder of iCabbi, we explore what happens after the exit.
After selling a majority stake in iCabbi to Renault in a life-changing deal, Gavan could have stepped away from business.
Instead, he started again.
Gavan takes us inside TBE Ventures, the investment company he set up to acquire and build businesses across completely different industries.
This includes SYLO, a plumbing business he plans to grow into a wider trade-services company, as well as plans to launch a children’s therapy centre supporting kids with learning difficulties.
He also discusses businesses he came close to acquiring but ultimately walked away from giving a fascinating insight into what makes a business worth buying and the red flags that can kill a deal.
And now, he’s back in the startup world.
With MoveCore, Gavan is building an AI-native operating platform for fleets and explains why he believes the future for larger companies could move from renting software to owning it.
We also discuss:
* Life after the iCabbi sale.
* What Gavan looks for when buying a business.
* Why he’s decided to build another tech startup.
* His advice for anyone starting a business.
* The doubt he still carries, even after his success and how he manages this.
A fascinating conversation about life after an exit, buying businesses, starting again and what drives an entrepreneur when they no longer have to do it.

From €60,000 in Revenue to €10 Million: The Incredible Story Behind iCabbi
In part 1 of this episode, we sit down with Gavan Walsh to learn about the business he founded iCabbi.
In part 2, we discuss life after the iCabbi sale from setting up an investment company and now getting back into the tech start up game.
It started in Portugal, with Gavan not being able to find a taxi and wishing something was available on his new iPhone to order one.
That was when the idea for iCabbi clicked: what if you could see live taxis on your phone?
Gavan tells us how that idea grew into one of the biggest B2B taxi software providers in the world.
But it nearly failed before it got started.
The original B2C model struggled. The technology was too slow, the market wasn’t ready and the business ran out of money more than once.
Something had to change.
iCabbi stopped focusing on the consumer app and started building dispatch software for taxi companies instead.
One customer became another. Ireland led to the US. And revenue grew from just €60,000 in 2012 to around €10 million by 2018.
The journey was anything but straightforward raising money, running out of it, technology failing, family holidays interrupted, expansion into the US and even attempted sales that fell through.
Eventually, Gavan sold a majority stake in iCabbi to Renault a life-changing moment that made years of sacrifice feel worthwhile.
We discuss:
* The holiday in Portugal where the idea for iCabbi was born.
* Why iCabbi’s original B2C model failed.
* Running out of money and fighting to keep the business alive.
* The pivot from a consumer taxi app to dispatch software.
* Winning their first customers in Cork and Dublin.
* Growing revenue from €60,000 in 2012 to around €10 million in 2018.
* The unexpected phone call that brought iCabbi to America.
* Why entering the US market was far more complicated than expected.
* How Uber changed the taxi industry by challenging its traditional rules.
* Building iCabbi into one of the world’s biggest software providers to taxi companies.
* Why reliability became one of iCabbi’s biggest competitive advantages.
* The reality of being permanently on call while building a technology company.
* Raising money, running out of money and dealing with constant setbacks.
* Family holidays interrupted by problems back at the business.
* The attempted sales that fell through before the eventual deal.
* What it felt like when the life-changing sale finally happened.
* Why the business you start with is often very different from the business that ultimately succeeds.
A brilliant conversation about pivoting, persistence and the reality of building a business when success is far from guaranteed.

Could Quantum Computing Be Bigger Than AI?

That’s one of the biggest questions we explored with Jason Lynch, CEO of Equal1, on the latest episode of The Hidden Hustle Podcast.

Jason has spent the last 7.5 years building Equal1, with an ambition that is anything but small: to become the biggest quantum computing company in the world.

What makes the story remarkable is the technology Equal1 has developed.

Jason and his team have spent years proving that something some of the smartest people in the world — including Nobel Prize-winning physicists and some of the world’s largest technology companies — believed couldn’t be done, actually could.

Equal1’s vision is to become a fabless quantum semiconductor company, creating quantum technology that can move beyond the laboratory and eventually integrate into existing semiconductor and data centre infrastructure.

The potential is enormous. Quantum computing could transform areas such as drug discovery, battery technology, logistics, energy and financial optimisation — tackling problems that are incredibly difficult for classical computers.

We discuss:
* Why Jason believes quantum computing could ultimately be bigger than AI.
* What quantum computing actually is, explained simply.
* Equal1’s ambition to become the world’s biggest quantum computing company.
* The remarkable technology Equal1 has developed.
* How they proved some of the world’s smartest scientists wrong.
* Why Equal1 believes quantum computing can be built using existing semiconductor infrastructure.
* The company’s vision to become a fabless quantum semiconductor company.
* Raising around $80m and why they plan to raise significantly more.
* Equal1’s first commercial product and what it means for the industry.
* Working with customers including the European Space Agency.
* The trillion-dollar problems quantum computing could potentially solve.
* Why making quantum technology usable could be more important than simply having the most powerful machine.
* Why the next Nvidia of computing could potentially emerge from the quantum industry right here in Ireland.
A fascinating conversation about a technology that could fundamentally change the way we compute.Link to Equal1 - https://www.equal1.com/

Follow Jason on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-lynch-cork-ireland/

Do you understand the complexities involved in getting a simple glass of clean drinking water?

In this episode, we sit down with Karl Zimmerer, founder of Glanua, to hear the incredible journey of building one of Ireland’s leading water and wastewater engineering businesses and taking it international.

Karl and his team has doubled the companies revenue in the last 4 years with Glanua on track to hit north of €200m in 2026.

Karl explains the hidden engineering behind something most of us take completely for granted: water. From collecting and treating raw water to delivering clean drinking water, collecting wastewater, treating it and ultimately finding ways to reuse the resulting resources, Glanua provides end-to-end engineering solutions across the entire water cycle.

We discuss:

- How rainwater actually becomes the clean drinking water coming out of your tap.

- Why Dublin’s reliance on a single major water source presents such a significant challenge.

- What Glanua actually does and the enormous complexity behind water and wastewater infrastructure.

- Why Glanua builds much of its equipment and infrastructure directly on-site.

- Why data centres require significant amounts of water and the solutions Glanua is developing to address this.

- Karl’s struggles getting the business off the ground and why delivering an exceptional first job became one of his most powerful marketing tools.

- Why relentless innovation and constantly challenging the status quo allowed Glanua to compete against businesses generating billions in revenue while they were turning over just €40–50 million.

- Growing revenue from approximately €40 million in 2014 to €80 million in 2019.

- How diversifying outside their core expertise created major problems for the wider group when COVID hit.

- The incredibly difficult cash flow challenges Karl faced as profits and cash generated by the core water business were needed to support struggling parts of the wider group.

- How Karl stepped up to manage the combined Irish and UK operations through one of the most challenging periods in the company’s history.

- How Glanua ultimately became part of BHSL, led by Denis Brosnan, and why the deal proved to be such a successful move for the business.

- Glanua’s expansion into the US and why M&A and building an exceptional team on the ground will be crucial to cracking the American market.

- Karl’s perspective on work-life balance after dealing with loss of his daughter when she was young and decades of building and scaling businesses.

- And the first job he recommends his own kids get — and why.Links & Resources:

Glanua : https://glanua.com/

Follow Karl on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karl-zimmerer/