For Dan Kiely, who went through blood, sweat and tears with his wife Linda to build the \u20ac150m Cork company VoxPro, it is surprising to hear him welcome the end of the 24\/7 hustle culture amongst the new generation of Irish business founders and startups.<\/p>\n
The sale of VoxPro to Canadian company Telus back in 2017 was one of the largest exits by Irish founders and set the Kielys on a new path as early-stage investors.<\/p>\n
Their current investment vehicle Masv (pronounced Massive), has recently brought in heavy hitters like former PayPal executive Louise Phelan to help scale small and growing businesses into future $100m giants, something many firms in Ireland struggle to achieve, Kiely said.<\/p>\n
Speaking to the Irish Examiner, he said after VoxPro, he went from being a full-time CEO to a consultant overnight. \u201cI didn’t have a strategic approach to investing, which I do now,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI started to make some investments really, but because I didn’t have a proper team around me, I didn’t have the support system I do now and so I made a lot of mistakes along the way.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
However, one of the early-stage investments he did make was a \u20ac250,000 check to legal startup Johnson Hana after a chance meeting with founder Dan Fox. \u201cHe said to me \u2018I’m a barrister by profession… but I also had a number-one single in a boy band.’ I said, ‘OK, I don’t need to hear anymore. I’ve never heard that combination before. So I don’t care what you do\u2014I’m going to write a cheque right here and now.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The investment ultimately paid off richly when Johnson Hana was acquired by US firm Eudia earlier this year for $50m. That experience, which included weekly phone calls with Fox made the exit all the sweeter. \u201cI had no involvement in his business day-to-day. I made it clear that wasn’t going to be the thing. But to see them come out the other side of it was a joy.\u201d Through Masv, the Kielys and their team are targeting other startups but have set loftier goals. Their portfolio is impressive and includes Bobby Healy\u2019s drone delivery company Manna, customer service firm Solidroad and has backed the Cork-founded sanitary products firm Riley.<\/p>\n
Having worked with a new generation of company founders, he said their change in approach is refreshing. \u201cThe 24\/7 hustle is dying out \u2013 and that\u2019s a good thing. In our time, to reach the numbers we reached at VoxPro, I literally worked 24\/7. I didn\u2019t have a personal life. My wife worked in the business too, but we were on seven days a week. My whole life became the company.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI won\u2019t lie \u2013 I have issues with my mental health from that period. I didn\u2019t have any hobbies. Work was my hobby, work was my life, work was everything.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI was heavily reliant on caffeine, sleeping medication, and alcohol at times just to function \u2013 to work a 10-hour day and then go entertain clients in the evening.\u201d \u201cOne of the things I’m seeing now is that there’s a trend away from this 24\/7 culture because you don’t need that.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
However, it is not all rosy in the garden for Irish startups. Building out his team at Masv with the likes of Phelan and Dave McCadden, the investment firm aims to address a major issue Kiely sees in the growth of Irish companies.<\/p>\n
\u201cIreland doesn\u2019t have a startup problem. We have a scale-up problem \u2013 that\u2019s the real issue.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re brilliant at getting companies to 10 people, but we\u2019re terrible at getting them from 10 to 100 people. We just don\u2019t think that way here.\u201d \u201cYou get to 10 people, you go for an Enterprise Ireland grant money, and a lot of founders think \u2018that\u2019s it \u2013 mission accomplished\u2019. That\u2019s the benchmark in Ireland, and it shouldn\u2019t be.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
That means the $50m exit secured by Johnson Hana is not sufficient with Masv eyeing bigger deals. \u201cIf you don\u2019t have a vision and a credible plan to get your business to a \u20ac100m-plus valuation, we\u2019re the wrong investors.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to see that you have the belief, and then we come in and help you build the team that will actually execute and get you there.\u201d Dan and Linda Kiely currently divide their time between Cork, Portugal and Los Angeles and encourage startups and founders to spread their wings.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf your biggest market is the United States, you have no business being in Ireland. I told the Solidroad founders: \u2018You have no business staying here.\u2019 Three or four months later both founders were living in San Francisco.\u201d \u201cYou get things done quicker in San Francisco. You land a big US client there, it\u2019s worth tens of millions. Here the decision always goes back to the mothership in California anyway.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Dan remained tight-lipped on any possible exits in 2026 but said they were planning a change in how they invest.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn 2026, we\u2019re pivoting. Writing fewer but bigger cheques to more later-stage companies because that\u2019s where the real scaling muscle is needed \u2013 and that\u2019s where we can add the most value.\u201d Masv also continues to target female founders where possible, stemming from his experience in male-dominated industries, where he observed systemic barriers to women’s entrepreneurial success.<\/p>\n
“I’m a very proud Irish feminist, which I worked for so long in areas where, I suppose, female voices were not necessarily heard. And it’s more difficult to succeed in business when it’s more difficult for women to ask for money, which is crazy today.”<\/p>\n
Masv has no particular area of focus, but Kiely admits it’s difficult to avoid AI, but he remains circumspect.<\/p>\n
“There’s a lot of FOMO investing in AI. The investor community in Ireland is very small, and you sometimes hear \u2018Did you hear such a person has invested in this? Or I need to be in that too\u2019. That’s not necessarily smart money. That’s kind of following the herd.”<\/p>\n
\u201cI’m very sceptical about actually using the term [AI] because it’s like if you remember back in the day, every company was saying \u2018We’re digital now\u2019 or cloud computing, but that said, we are investing in a number of AI companies, provided we believe what the AI actually does that’s unique within the company.”<\/p>\n
Along with building Masv, Kiely said he hopes to be able to speak more next year on a project related to wellness and mental health.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m actively looking at doing something myself in that area, although it\u2019s at an early stage and my wife has told me I\u2019m mad to even think about starting something new.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you were having a drink with your mates five or six years ago and brought up mental health, people would have laughed. It\u2019s different now, which is good,” he said, adding that it is no longer necessary to destroy yourself to build a big company.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For Dan Kiely, who went through blood, sweat and tears with his wife Linda to build the \u20ac150m…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":192203,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,8531,43],"class_list":["post-192202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-munster-business","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=192202"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192202\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/192203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}