Early Starts, Enda and Egos

It was a hectic first week in my new job as CEO, between investment and new job announcements, a visit from An Taoiseach and our quarterly Dublin staff briefing last Friday.

It wasn't so hectic as I entered the office at 5:45 am last Monday morning - officially my first day - surprising the overnight service desk team (and reassuring them I wasn't planning on making that a habit) before heading towards Newstalk and a chat with Donal O'Donovan on Business Breakfast. I was thrown into a series of questions that would repeat themselves several times over the following few days.

• What about Brexit?
• Is an IPO on the cards?
• What are your plans as CEO?

These came up several times from different media sources as we hosted An Taoiseach on Wednesday when we announced 365 new jobs.

I'll address each of the specific questions in posts over the coming weeks, but I wanted to reflect primarily on Wednesday. We'd never had a Taoiseach visit us before, and certainly not experienced the size of the accompanying media pack that preceded him.

I'd never even met Enda before, and after testing me to the core of my Irish on the way to the office, he took time to meet everyone, spending as much time with the people serving the coffee as he did with our Directors. He was a great example of one of our core values ' no ego'. His visit gave our staff a huge lift - sometimes the Irish technology scene is perceived as the preserve of the big brand multinationals that the IDA have successfully courted and assisted to set up in Ireland. It's not. There's an ecosystem of very successful ambitious organisations of which we are just one, that don't often have the spotlight shone on them in a way we had last week. We streamed the event on Facebook Live - I'd say from the comments there wasn't a person in Mayo not watching.

On the topic of no ego - I can think of no greater practical example of what it means to us than last Wednesday - one of the biggest days in Version 1's history, the culmination of over 20 years of hard work, setting down a marker for the next 3 years of ambitious growth and the person who had contributed more than any other to getting us to that point - our founder Justin Keatinge chose to let the spotlight fall on the wider Management Team, not even coming into the office.

In an era where both politicians and frequently businesses get berated, sometimes justly, for arrogance and being out of touch, the lack of egos on show last week hopefully provided a useful counterbalance and showed that it is possible to be succesful in business and in politics whilst remaining true to a 'no ego' value.