Net Results: I did a pleasant double take when I read recently about Ireland's latest multimillionaire. Kerryman Jerry Kennelly, said the stories, walked away $135 million (€109 million) wealthier two weeks ago after selling his Tralee-based company StockByte to media giant Getty Images.
What a great story, and what great news for Kennelly, his family, his employees - who will share in some of that wealth as he created a fund to enable them to draw down an average of €175,000 each, tax free - and for Ireland.
That's the kind of phenomenal deal that will float lots of other entrepreneurial boats in this country. It will raise venture capital interest in Ireland, and will set a solid example of real achievement for other up and coming men and women.
In an RTÉ interview, Kennelly made the point that he expected some of his employees to go on to become successful entrepreneurs. I'd bet he is right. Whatever the value of a good MBA programme, working in a successful company close to a successful entrepreneur is the best business training ground there is (and as many have pointed out, successful entrepreneurs pursue many things, but business degrees tend not to be among them).
Kennelly's success will also leave a lot of entrepreneurs feeling they are right in thinking Dublin isn't always the centre of the Irish business universe. After all, Getty Images seemed to have no problems finding Kennelly in Tralee.
But I also enjoyed this news because I'd written a piece on StockByte over eight years ago, when it was tiny. I'd come across Kennelly and a little gang of his employees at the MacWorld Expo in San Francisco.
I was doing what journalists tend to do at these large events - slinking around, checking out the stands while trying to hide the prominent "press" lettering on my entrance badge. That way, you can eavesdrop on presentations or have a normal conversation with the staff on the stands without getting the onslaught that happens when they sense a story in the making. As I passed the StockByte stand, I was surprised to hear an Irish accent, so I stopped and realised almost everyone was Irish. Plus, they were funny and brash and friendly and having a great time pushing their copyright-free image library. I spent part of the next two days talking to Kennelly and his employees. I ran into them now and then in the years after.
Here's how I described them back then, in January 1998: "Visitors to last week's annual MacWorld Expo show in San Francisco couldn't possibly have overlooked the bright yellow oasis of colour lighting a corner of the Moscone Centre's massive south hall.
"The Irish had staked out their turf among the Silicon Valley kingpins and a Kerryman wasn't going to come all that way and not be noticed.
"Jerry Kennelly, managing director of Tralee firm StockByte, had arrived in San Francisco with thousands of shrieking yellow phonebook-sized catalogues and everyone was going to know about it. Not that Mr Kennelly was making a fuss. He spent the long Expo days in shirt and tie, quietly talking to potential customers and distributors of his CD-Roms full of royalty-free photographs.
"Meanwhile, a dozen employees - most flown over from Ireland, with a few Yanks added for good measure - roamed around their glaring yellow floor space in yellow T-shirts and caps, handing out catalogues and free posters to a continuous stream of curious visitors.
"For added effect, Mr Kennelly had hired a presenter, whom he watched with amused satisfaction. Dressed in mismatched plaid shirt and trousers and dark wraparound sunglasses, he paced a tabletop and barked at the crowds, encouraging people to fill in forms to win thousands of pounds worth of StockByte products.
"Not a bad showing for a company which began life a year ago, with a small booth on a neglected edge of the showfloor at last year's MacWorld Expo.
"Then, it had 10 CDs available. Now, StockByte offers 46 CDs with more than 5,000 images, which customers either buy from their website, catalogue or call centre, or through its 35 distributors in 25 countries.
"'We were seeking distributors last year,' noted Mr Kennelly. 'Now, distributors are seeking us.'"
The piece also noted that although the company had begun with some traditional Irish settings and faces for its images, it had quickly expanded to include all sorts of ethnic settings and themes. From Helsinki to Johannesburg, Sao Paolo to Beijing, designers could find images that made the StockByte catalogue relevant to them. They weren't stilted, dull images either. They were original and of extremely high quality - work that looked like it did not come from a catalogue. Clearly, there was a market waiting for this type of product.
I got a kick from rereading this final paragraph: "With a recent $1 million in funding from Ireland's ACT Venture Capital, which took a 25 per cent equity stake in the company, Mr Kennelly feels StockByte is ready to take on the big guys. 'We're number three in the race in terms of product content delivery,' he said. 'The challenge is to deliver the sales to match.'"
I think we can take it that they delivered. Congratulations to all involved on this achievement; this was a fantastic deal of the sort that would be rare enough in any part of the world. That it happened here should be a point of pride for Irish business - and a point of inspiration.
