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MENTOR: ENDA O’COINEEN
STAYING THE COURSE
Having recently launched a new book, Journey to the Edge, Galway businessman and adventurer Enda O’Coineen feels strongly about the importance of taking calculated risks in business and in life, writes EITHNE DUNNE.
For most of us, losing a mast while alone on a boat 200 miles off the coast of New Zealand might be enough to put us off sailing for life. Not so for seasoned businessman and mariner Enda O’Coineen, whose only thought on making it back to dry land was how soon he could go back out and complete his solo circumnavigation of the globe. The founder and partner of Kilcullen Kapital Partners – most recently in the news because of its takeover of the Sunday Business Post last year – was the first ever Irish competitor in the Vendée Globe around-theworld race in 2017. Despite disaster striking his first attempt, he went back and completed it the following year – astonishing everyone with his sheer tenacity in the process.
He recounts in heart-stopping detail his experiences on the race – among other things – in his latest book, Journey to the Edge. In many ways it was a journey shaped by the same characteristics as his business career: ambition, risk (of the calculated sort), and an unquenchable thirst for adventure.
THE BACK STORY
A former Irish Times journalist, Galwayman O’Coineen has been involved in a plethora of successful business ventures over the years. With experience in investment management, international multi-channel sales and brand building, he has played a key role in various turnarounds and start-ups.
Having founded several magazines, as well as Aquabroker Insurance, in Ireland, he moved to Prague in the Czech Republic where he pulled off what he says is his proudest business achievement to date. He’s referring to his founding of the Czech and Slovak Credit Bureaus, to enable the sharing of credit information between financial institutions. “This was the first such credit agency in a former communist country, and was transformative for the economy,” he says. A complex project, it saw O’Coineen pulling together numerous stakeholders, including the heads of the country’s seven banks, to agree on a common platform. He went on to start a mortgage business there, as well as Globix Telecom. The initial investment in the latter was US$150,000; he sold it four years later at a value of US$35m.
With Kilcullen Kapital Partners, he has led major brownfield investments in manufacturing including the acquisition of ZPA and its transformation into a smart metering manufacturer. He was also a founding partner in renewable energy fund Enercap, and oversaw the purchase, restructure and sale of the Prague Stock Exchange building.
His latest dry-land venture is of course the Sunday Business Post, which Kilcullen Kapital Partners acquired last year. O’Coineen’s early years as a journalist have, he says, helped him when it came to thinking laterally about this latest project. The new owners of the paper are reinventing it as a digital business, while keeping the print version. Hugely passionate about the project, O’Coineen says he has travelled to Norway, Sweden, Denmark and the US for inspiration. “It’s a very strong brand, and the more we get into it, the more excited we get by it.”
Once the business is profitable, O’Coineen intends to divert some of that profit into community projects in line with one of his core beliefs: that keeping business part of the community is a mutually beneficial approach. And this is not just vague aspiration; O’Coineen has form in this area. He is founding president of the Atlantic
THE IMPORTANCE OF GOALS
When O’Coineen’s first attempt at his global circumnavigation went askew, there was never a question of giving up on the idea. Instead, it was straight back to the drawing board to plan the remainder of the voyage.
“Without being bullish, it’s a core attribute of success that if you set out to do something and it’s humanly possible and makes sense, you should do it. Success is about setting goals, so if you decide to do something, set that goal. Mine was to do a solo circumnavigation and I was single-mindedly focused on it,” he explains.
That doesn’t mean, he says, that you can’t adjust your goals as you go along – something he knows only too well after his experience on the Vendée Globe. While he says his “whole world fell apart” when he lost his mast, at the time he was just glad he hadn’t been washed over the side with it and, after the initial shock, he recalibrated his goals. “My new goal was to survive the next two hours [which he did by cutting away the mast and rigging to stop it from pulling the boat over]. After that, my next goal was to get to safety on the South Island.” Which, of course, he did.
AVOID RISK AT YOUR PERIL
With an entire chapter in his book devoted to the topic of risk, O’Coineen writes that “everything I have learned about adventure, life and success is about taking risk”. Indeed, the concept of risk – and what O’Coineen sees as its lamentable lack in today’s society – is as much a part of this book as his voyage.
“Some of the great things we enjoy today would not exist if people hadn’t taken risks; in fact, most of what we enjoy in society today would never have happened with the rules we have now.”
Ever the real-world businessman, he gives a real-world example: “Say you wanted to start a rail network. You’d have to have an environmental impact study, planning permission, a feasibility study, a cost-benefit analysis, and so on. Yes, you might eventually build it, but it might take you five years.”
He relates a recent experience of his that perfectly illustrates how maligned the notion of risk has become. For the launch of Journey to the Edge, O’Coineen initially wanted to mark the occasion by breaking a bottle (in much the same way that you would launch a vessel). But the suggestion initiated a raft of worries, objections and insurance-related anxieties about potential damage to people or property. It’s a trivial example, yet captures precisely the risk-averse nature of our society.
In fact O’Coineen’s circumnavigation venture was about much more than fulfilling a longheld dream on his part. It was in many ways also a nod to freedom, flying in the face of what O’Coineen sees as a pervasive and damaging distaste for risk – in business or in life – and a widespread obsession with safety.
“There are so many rules and regulations that it’s almost impossible to do anything,” he says. “It’s all about protection now. What I did was break out of that, by stepping out of my daily life and setting this big, hairy, audacious goal.”
That’s not to say that O’Coineen was cavalier about his maritime exploits; yes he took risks, but none that weren’t calculated or thoroughly premeditated. And all of this translates directly into business, he says.
“People might say I was mad [to undertake the voyage], but it was calculated; I would not be here if it was an inordinate degree of risk. We are living in a risk-averse society, and that kind of society doesn’t develop. That’s a fundamental of entrepreneurship and business – agility, and a willingness to try new things.”
Despite this, he says entrepreneurs have to keep pushing ahead with their ideas. “Ultimately, if you think too much about doing something you’ll never do it. If you have a hunch, it’s better to have tried [and failed] than never to have tried at all. There are still lots of opportunities if people are willing to work and drive their belief forward.”
