Conor Handley
Chief executive of FIRE1
Conor Hanley is chief executive of FIRE1, a connected medical device solutions company dedicated to improving outcomes for people suffering with chronic diseases. Its mission is to empower millions of people suffering from heart failure to get their normal lives back through the use of an implantable sensor that can be monitored remotely by clinicians, with data also made available to the patient. FIRE1 is led by an experienced medical devices team that works with researchers, clinicians, patients and payors to help reduce the burden of heart failure. The FIRE1 system is undergoing global clinical trials to test the safety and effectiveness of the technology. More information about the Future-HF study may be found on clinicaltrials.gov.
Describe your business model and what makes your business unique
We are developing a way of managing heart conditions in two ways: first is the fact that this is a completely novel signal capturing information on the heart. Second, we want to change the game by arming the patient with this data so that they are empowered to keep themselves healthy rather than being completely reliant on already overworked healthcare systems to look after them.
What moment/deal would you cite as the ‘game changer’ or turning point for the company?
I think our first patient was the game changer for us. Outside the device industry, people would struggle to believe how difficult it is to reach that milestone, and how rewarding it is when someone suffering with a chronic disease puts their trust in your company to help them with their burden. Many medical device start-ups can flounder before ever reaching this point, so for us to see our product improving real people’s lives was a game changer.
What were the best and the worst pieces of advice you received when starting out?
The best advice was not to compromise when it comes to hiring. In a growing company, there is huge pressure to fill vacancies quickly but we have stuck to this guidance always, not just with skills in mind but values too, and this is what has led to our wonderful culture.
The worst advice was to keep the scope small and look for a quick exit. We have been clear from the start that we want to bring this technology to millions of people and not compromise in terms of the research and development spend to build the best possible solution for patients and clinicians.
To what extent does your business trade internationally and what are your future ambitions?
Heart failure is a global problem and one of the biggest causes of hospitalisation in developed countries. We are running trials in the US and in five European countries, including Ireland. The US remains the biggest single healthcare market and will be our initial launch, followed by a European launch and from there to Asia-Pacific. But no corner of the world is not affected by this disease, and our goal is to help as many people as possible.
What are the big disruptive forces in your industry?
Ageing demographics and increasing chronic disease will accentuate the need for scalable solutions to keep people out of hospital. I see a sea change in the attitude of patients to technology and their role in managing their conditions. This generation is expecting to have more data, more autonomy and a more consumer-like user experience than in the past. These are the trends we are designing our solution for and we are excited about the opportunities these present.
What are you doing to disrupt, innovate and improve the products or services you offer?
We want to provide the data directly to the patient. We think key to unburdening the healthcare staff and to improving outcomes is to empower the patient with their data. This generation of heart failure patients adopted the iPhone in the 2000s and the Apple watch in the 2010s, so they are primed to manage their own data and will adopt devices that give them a consumer-like user experience.
Is AI affecting your business and industry?
Healthcare needs new ways to deliver better quality of care to all more effectively as we live longer. Data and AI are going to be transformative. When it is married with unique data streams like we get from our sensor, AI will help deliver a personalised real-time unique user experience that will be a trusted companion to patients with chronic diseases, allowing them to manage their condition while living their normal lives.
Brendan Mee
MTM Engineering Group
MTM Engineering Group is an electrical contractor focusing on projects across Europe. We deliver pre-construction design co-ordination, busbar installation, cable installation, termination and communications installation on an industrial scale. The company was founded in 1997 by Martin and Patricia Mee, and it has grown from strength to strength. Our operations span 10 countries across Europe and our teams have grown to more than 700 directly employed people across our group. Our acquisitions of Leo Larkin Electrical (MV Division) along with CET Connect & ATSS, form our hub for ICT delivery, delivering structured and fibre-cable installation across Europe and growing our footprint year on year.
Describe your business model and what makes your business unique
We are a services-based business so we deliver onsite for our customers. Our focus is the construction-critical path in electrical and communications infrastructure. We achieve this by focusing on health, safety, environmental and quality processes. We also invest in our own bespoke plant and technology to make us more efficient than the marketplace. All our personnel are directly employed, which gives us a great team ethos and company culture to deliver when it counts.
What was your ‘back to the wall’ moment and how did you overcome it?
The year 2021 was critical for MTM. We doubled our business but weren’t fully ready for it. It was a pressure cooker, but as a team we stuck with it by being honest and open, as is our culture. We delivered our projects and learned from our challenges, restructuring the company to allow us to grow stronger into the future. In 2024 our company will be three times larger than in 2021 in every metric.
To what extent does your business trade internationally and what are your future ambitions?
About 90 per cent of our revenues are outside the island of Ireland. We will continue to grow this across Europe and beyond, with other markets opening up to us on the horizon.
Describe your growth funding path
Our growth funding path has been a mixture of equity partners with Waterland private equity and self-funding from retained profits in the business.
How will your market look in three years and where would you like your business to be?
Our main market is the data centre market, which is expanding at a rapid rate. We will continue to grow within it, delivering our services to our customers and expanding our customer base within the market.
What are the big disruptive forces in your industry?
Limitation of utilities within our sector is certainly a disrupter. We have seen the capacity in Ireland greatly reduce due to lack of investment in future infrastructure. We are not seeing this on the European landscape, so while Ireland will falter in capacity, it will be delivered in alternative regions across Europe. This is an unfortunate reality and a real own-goal for Ireland at present.
What is the most common mistake you see entrepreneurs make?
Over-reliance on control. It is crucial to put the right people around you, with the correct systems and processes to allow scale. If this is done correctly, it is remarkable what can be achieved. But hire the right people at the right time for the business. Then get out of their way and let them do what they are there to do.
What is the single most important piece of advice you would offer to a less experienced entrepreneur?
Understand your vision for the business, then make tangible actionable strides to achieve it. What can be achieved in one year is typically overestimated, but what can be achieved in five years is usually grossly underestimated.
Gilbert Yates
Healthcare Ireland
The Healthcare Ireland ethos is to provide an environment where individuality is emphasised, and the privacy and dignity of all residents is recognised. There are more than 2,300 employees throughout the homes. Healthcare Ireland Group started in July 2015 with the opening of Bradley Manor in Belfast. There are now 25 care facilities in the portfolio, with a diverse range of services. The categories of care include general and dementia nursing, dementia residential, mental health, physical disability and learning disability. There are more than 1,200 residents across Northern Ireland who use the services.
What light bulb moment prompted you to start up in business?
After developing care facilities for UK healthcare groups, I saw a gap in the Northern Ireland market to provide better quality of care and best-in-class assets.
What is your greatest business achievement to date?
The creation of the first home against all the odds will be my greatest achievement, without which none of the others could have followed. A close second was delivering Northern Ireland’s Covid-19 emergency hospital by renting a 160-bed hotel and converting this to a care emergency hospital facility that includes its own pharmacy dispensary. This was done all within 10 days in the first two weeks of the pandemic.
What were the best and the worst pieces of advice you received when starting out?
Best: never overleverage your business and secondly, employ the best team within your industry and reward them well. Worst: I was told not to enter the healthcare industry as I had no knowledge of it.
To what extent does your business trade internationally and what are your future ambitions?
Sister company Filo Heartbeat International is a recruitment business managed by a Filipino team and has close ties to the Filipino community in Northern Ireland and beyond. This company was founded by myself and my Filipino partners. The company provides staff from around the world, including the UAE, India, Philippines, Africa and more. We then deploy them as temporary and permanent staff to our facilities within the group and also other care home groups.
Healthcare Ireland is now exploring the Republic of Ireland healthcare markets, including specialist care. We are negotiating with various care groups in the UK for potential acquisitions and new developments.
Describe your growth funding path
The Flax Trust assisted with the first site acquisition by offsetting the site payment for two years. Ulster Bank funded the development. We recently completed a sale and leaseback deal with US-based real estate trust Welltower for 11 assets. This allowed me to maintain full control of all operations and growth plans, holding the equity. This made sure I was still able to continue to maintain the quality and standard of care and also to be able to reward the team.
What are the big disruptive forces in your industry?
Healthcare budgets combined with an increasing desire to improve facilities, care quality and volume. A longer-term financing plan for healthcare in Northern Ireland would provide more certainty and attract more investment into this crucial sector.
How is the inflationary environment impacting your business?
Energy and wage inflation can be existential issues for healthcare businesses, and we have seen many struggle in recent years coming out of the pandemic. As we cannot pass these on to our customers, we are vigilant, trying to anticipate input cost changes and to ensure that we are well funded in order to deal with the challenges these present. We annually retender our supply chain to maintain the best cost and economics throughout the group. As we expand, we create more scale, which gives us more buying power.
What is the most common mistake you see entrepreneurs make?
For aspiring entrepreneurs, if they are only pursuing the dream of money, it will never work. There needs to be a real desire to fulfil a nonfinancial purpose.
For proven entrepreneurs, it’s easy to see only the successes and start believing your own hype. Remembering the tough times and the mistakes and staying honest with yourself is important.
What is the single most important piece of advice you would offer to a less experienced entrepreneur?
Don’t chase what others do. Stay focused on your own dream, goals [and] never, ever quit until you deliver the goal. Employ the best people in your industry.
David Maguire
BNRG Group
BNRG Group, founded in 2007, works in planning, developing, constructing, owning and operating solar photovoltaic (PV) and renewable energy battery storage projects. It has its headquarters in Dublin, and offices in the US and Australia. It has a global workforce of 50, set to increase to 55 in the coming months. The company has delivered 400MW of projects in Europe and the US. The company is in a significant growth phase, with more than five gigawatts (GW) of active projects in the development pipeline across the US, Canada, Ireland, Britain and Australia. When delivered, it will be enough to power more than 1½ million homes every year for 40 years.
What light bulb moment prompted you to start up in business?
BNRG came about from my love of the planet and the urgent need to address the damage we’re doing. Decarbonising electricity is crucial. Solar energy or photovoltaic technology has motivated me beyond anything else. I know it can have the greatest impact in decarbonising the energy system and slowing climate change.
Describe your business model. What makes your business unique?
We plan, develop, construct and operate large-scale solar farms in Ireland and around the world, integrating solar technology and operating flexibly to deliver efficient and sustainable energy solutions.
Our full life-cycle approach means our global team oversees every phase of our projects – from site selection, planning, design and construction to ongoing management.
What moment would you cite as the turning point for the company?
When we first founded BNRG, we were laughed at. Solar was considered too expensive. Then China started mass manufacturing photovoltaics for panels around 2011 and this started to bring costs down. The game-changer came in 2014 when Lazard published its annual Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE) Report, announcing solar as the lowest-cost technology for electricity generation.
It was a watershed moment for us and for the industry. It meant we could now compete against all other forms of generation. It has led to solar becoming the fastest-growing form of electricity generation in the world.
To what extent does your business trade internationally and what are your future ambitions?
We’re a global business, and 75 per cent of our activity is outside Ireland in countries such as US, Canada, Australia and Britain. We’re continuing to extend our position in these markets and beyond.
What are the big disruptive forces in your industry?
Electricity has traditionally been centrally generated but emerging trends and technologies such as digitisation, blockchain, AI and the internet of things are going to overhaul and disrupt the market within the next decade. It’s going to look very different.
In particular, advances in AI and blockchain are going to enable consumers to automatically trade the electricity they are generating based on pre-forecasted weather data and other predictive analyses.
What are you doing to disrupt, innovate and improve the products or services you offer?
We are focused on where solar tech is heading, and we’re designing projects with next-generation solar technology that isn’t yet commercially available. This ensures we’re always ahead when planning for the next five years.
Staying close to policy and policymakers in all our markets ensures we gain insights into potential legislative changes quickly. Geopolitics is the biggest risk to what we do, so at any one time we are operating in multiple different markets to insulate the business from political uncertainty and regulatory risk.
What is the single most important piece of advice you would offer to a less experienced entrepreneur?
Entrepreneurs are driven, and this tenacity is what delivers results. However, they can sometimes be a little too blinkered. It’s important to be open to other ideas, and not so blinkered you can’t pivot.
An ability to fail is key. We all make mistakes and go down the wrong path. Questioning yourself and being open to other ideas can prevent you straying too far off course. Above all, maintaining conviction and staying true to your core beliefs are vital.
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