Many business people have a series of metaphors that shape how they think about the world and unsurprisingly, most of mine come from growing up on a dairy farm, on the shores of Lough Neagh.
For me, two in particular stand out, the first of which relates to a simple farm gate. Once upon a time I landed in Wall Street to head up a sales office with just two days training. At the beginning of each and every sales pitch that followed, I imagined myself leaning on our front gate at home on a warm summers evening, looking out over the herd, shooting the breeze with my dad, or some friends. I always thought if you can be easy and natural in meetings and project the excitement and enthusiasm of a conversation at the farm gate, you could woo any audience. It’s proved successful and since then, I’ve always coached novice sales people to find their own “farm gate”. In other words, somewhere comfortable, where they feel most at ease.
The second metaphor is farming itself. Whenever I think about my childhood, I always picture a sunny day, around silage time, loading bales of hay, or alternatively, a crisp winter’s morning carrying buckets of hot water in the snow. The reality of farming in Ireland of course is that it’s a tougher slog than that. Hot summer days are rare, it hardly ever snows and cold, wet, dark winter mornings are frequent and very much the norm. Much more time is spent with a grape shovelling manure in the rain than with a pitchfork loading hay. BUT, as we all know, happiness is a simple thing and a focus on those sunny summer days help us to persevere through the long dark winters. Above all, we learn to savour those days when they do come around.
Business has its summer days, ringing the NYSE opening bell with Wombat, winning an Oscar with The Shore, and of course, the less publicised moments; the key deal that goes your way, the office expansion, the key hire you made and the bonuses and pay rises you were able to grant your staff after a decent quarter or year.
The reality though is that in the long term, business is mostly about persistence and perseverance. Sticking at it when things don’t go your way, when every deal process ends with a kick in the teeth and advancing is like pushing through treacle. Those are the tough winter months, getting up hours before sunrise, in the wind and sleet, morning after morning, month after month.
We’ve been having one of those quarters over at Lough Shore.
Recently one of our big focal points has been the tender to manage the next NISPO II seed fund. Seed investment is what we do, so we were excited about this one and yesterday, Invest NI made their decision. Not only did we not win the tender, it has emerged that the panel placed us in a solid last place amongst the six bidders that made it to the second round. We’re pretty open about our wins and want to do similar in this instance, and as such, we plan to share the feedback on our application in the next fortnight or so.
It’s been a tough one to swallow but we’re still looking forward. Across our portfolio there are lots of encouraging signs that sunny days are on the way. The majority of our partners had their best ever quarter in Q1; SendmyBag, geopii and Converser are storming ahead and are well on target to beat previous targets, following their best ever year in 2013, and ALL are hiring. Stevie, Kieran and I have also spent a lot of time focused on another company in the fintech space called Options. Based out of London and New York, Options is also on target to deliver its best ever quarter, following a fantastic 2013.
Of course, NISPO II hasn’t been our only focus this quarter and just yesterday we closed on a deal that we believe is exciting not just for those in the Lough Shore ecosystem but for the wider tech sector in Belfast, and subject to confirming a couple of details we hope to announce it in the next few weeks. Funnily enough, Wombat spent its formative years just 20 yards from where we inked the deal, so while we’ve taken our knocks this winter, we fancy history might just be beginning to repeat itself.
Perhaps summer is just around the corner.
– Danny