Ross Kelly and Conor Crowley are joint managing directors of Vizor, a software provider that enables the supervision of companies by a supervisory authority, such as a central bank, financial regulator or tax authority.
Friends since the age of 15, Kelly and Crowley both attended St Michael’s College in Dublin before going on to Trinity College. Kelly studied management science and information systems, while Crowley studied computer science;
They joined Vizor as founder members in 2001. The company arose from a small consulting firm called Clanwilliam Consulting that worked in the field of financial regulation.
Vizor employs 50 people across three offices in Dublin, Dubai and Ottawa, and will grow to 60 by the end of 2015. The majority of Vizor’s employees are based at the company headquarters in Sandyford, Dublin. The company’s turnover has grown at an average rate of 140 per cent per annum since 2011, and is set to top €10 million in 2015.
Vizor operates in more than 20 countries throughout the EMEA, North America, the Caribbean and the Antipodes, and customers include central banks such as the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England.
What vision/lightbulb moment prompted you to start up in business? The idea really came from a wider regulatory consulting project we were working on with Clanwilliam Consulting in Jordan. Part of the scope was the implementation of a "software package for financial regulation". When we did the research and realised that no such thing existed, we figured there must be a global market for such software.
Describe your business model and what makes your business unique We license our software platform to central banks, financial regulators and tax authorities, along with implementation services and post-implementation support.
We generally have one client in each country we operate in, which is pretty unique in itself. It also brings quite a unique challenge in terms of culture – the mentality of every client is significantly different to the last.
What was your "back-to-the- wall" moment and how did you overcome it? At the beginning of 2011, we were out of cash. Banks were not lending. We approached Enterprise Ireland, which offered us a loan if we could bring in a large deal we were working on in the Middle East. Of course, the deal fell through at the last minute.
Thankfully, Enterprise Ireland decided to back us anyway, as we had a strong track record with them, and the next opportunity soon came along.
What moment/deal would you cite as the "game changer" or turning point for the company? Having invested very substantially in our technology from 2006 to 2010, we badly needed a breakthrough client. The opportunity came in 2011 when we won a major deal with the Canadian Central Bank – highly regarded globally for their management of the Canadian economy through the global economic downturn. We couldn't have asked for a better reference.
What was your biggest business mistake? We had an early success with a very big client in the UK. But we did not have the skillsets or experience in-house to effectively manage a big client.
We also became overly dependent on them. This ultimately poisoned the relationship and although we had delivered a number of great solutions to that client, we ended up not being able use them as a reference, which really set us back.
What is the most common mistake you see entrepreneurs make? Underestimating the cost, complexity and time required to bring a software product to market.
