Transcript

Hi there, and thanks for joining as well, we've spent a lot of time in the last couple of weeks talking about COVID-19. And while the challenges continue with the virus, it's time to maybe start talking about other things as well, the kind of businesses that we're going to be dealing a lot more with when this is all over, because it will be over someday. So let's turn our attention to the future. One of those companies is called Indeemo. I'm Jonathan Haley, and this is Red Business.

The Red Business podcast with Jonathan Haley heads McCarthy Insurance Group, putting business in Cork first.

Eugene Murphy is the founder of Indeemo, and he's with me now.

Eugene, how are you?

Introduction

Hi, Jonathan. I'm great. Thanks for having me on the show.

Good to have you here. I mean, look, I know, we said we're not going to talk about it. But I mean, how over the last few weeks been for you, I know you and your 20 colleagues in Indeemo, everyone has been scattered to the four winds, how have you found remote working?

Well, look, it's a bit bizarre, isn't it? It's a whole new normal, I think, you know, on a personal level, you know, you're locked at home with four kids. Wife, Caroline. So we're all here. It's obviously challenging, you know, employees are very isolated. So it's very important to bring them together online and things like Slack, and tools like that, you know, commercially for us has been very busy. Since thankfully. So, you know, we have a technology allows you to do research remotely. So you know, we have a lot of people coming at us now looking for a new way, I suppose a futuristic way to keep doing research. So for us, really, it's been very, very busy. On the personal front, quite challenging and quite bizarre. But business as usual, I'm thankful to report.

We'll talk about the nuts and bolts of the business. But to give a shorthand version, it's an app on your phone that helps provide online qualitative research. And we're going to go into that in just a minute and how it's kind of revolutionising that sector. But tell me a little bit about yourself. Eugene, you didn't. You didn't start with an app. What did you What's your background? How did you get to this point in your career?

Career Background

So yeah, so a crazy random meandering journey? I suppose. John's really so? Yeah, so look, I grew up in Blarney. You know, son of a farmer, did civil engineering in university. And although the civil engineering my first job was actually in London was in investment banking technology. So I suppose I've always been looking over the ditch, I guess I've always been kind of interested in new things. So I spent my first five years in London as a business analyst as a product manager working in technology for banking. Okay, which was an awesome experience. I guess that's where I got my technology creds. And then I came back to Ireland and run an engineering consultancy here during the Celtic Tiger boom, property was very busy, obviously, very successful fees. But there's that was coming to an end, I was looking to do something different. I was I was very excited about the potential the internet for excited about the potential of doing business anywhere from Cork. So we set up this company in 2011. And we decided to get into technology and get other words.

Okay, it's it's a bit of a left turn at Albuquerque there to to start doing technology. Given your engineering background. I could I could see the draw of a boat. Did you have any idea what it was going to be when you made that decision?

I didn't really, you know, I was I was keen to travel, you know, I was working in Saville at the time, side and side and Cork selling suits. So I guess I had to give to the Blarney I guess. So. You know, we did some really strong interviews, a company called Salomon Brothers came to UCC (Ireland), you know, really excited by them. So it was a bit of a whirlwind, really. So, you know, from filling out an application form to being offered a job in one of the top investment banks was only 12 days that was back in? Wow, that was back and forth. You're in college. Right? So. So I got this exciting opportunity. When I looked into it, this was almost pre internet, believe it or not. So, you know, it was a once in a lifetime opportunity. And they offered me the job. So I said give it lash and went to London, as well as last night between London, New York and for five years. So it was an amazing opportunity. And I think, really, that's probably one of the messages here. I think, you know, education isn't greedy about what you've done. It's about what you can do in the future. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. You know, so I think we're in a space where all the answers are on the internet now. So I think if you've got the right attitude, the good work ethic, it's pretty much possible to pivot to any degree or any qualification into something new.

Well, the purpose we'll come to in a minute, but when you start to doing this, what was the first incarnation of Indeemo? What did you think it was going to be?

The Origins of Indeemo

So I've got four kids, four wonderful kids, Kira, Kevin, Harry, and Sarah, and, you know, back in late 2000s, I guess, early 2010s, you know, what I realised was, I was, you know, kind of living their lives their first five years for my phone. So I've been getting messages from Caroline getting videos, getting pictures. So a lot of our best memories are being shared socially. Right. So so the genesis of the company really was essentially private Facebook for family. So we set up essentially as this kind of mash up between, you know, private Facebook and that baby journal. Right? So so the first product was called Tweekaboo tweets, Tweekaboo tweakable, your tweets about your kids, and really was a way for families to kind of capture and share moments privately in a safe place online using social networking style.

The problem is WhatsApp came along and had a very similar idea to yourself didn't know

100%. So like things happen very, very quickly, right? And you have to adapt. So like literally, Facebook was just launching, it still wasn't there, it was still very much in universities, and then WhatsApp rolled in and, and blew it out of the water. So it was very, very challenging. The product was awesome. Everybody loved it. But what I guess I learned as an entrepreneur is very few people actually need this. And I think that's the difference between success and not being successful. It's want versus need, right?

Well, it's about identifying your customer. That's rule number one, if you're having a business, who's your customer, and how can you sell to them. So it would have been probably quite difficult to monetize that one. There was so much competition in the market. We're back to that pivot now, aren't we? How did you pivot Eugene, towards market research and qualitative research?

Yeah, so look, it was very interesting. So realising very quickly that WhatsApp have taken over kind of b2c pay, we actually went after the brand. So we did some work for P&G in Cincinnati, we did some work, go to Singapore with some, you know, informal brands. So the brands loved the product as a way to kind of build a community around the brands. Okay, so, so we took that essentially private social network, and we kind of evolved into, you know, a way for brands connect with their their audience connect with their customers, and kind of capture and share moments. So it kind of morphed into user generated content play. So we knew that real opportunity was with brands, initially, women tend targeting the marketing departments, but but in their story, right, so I'm sitting in the office out in the console road roundabout, mid 2015. And we got an email and from an anthropologist asking, could they use essentially that private social network for a research methodology called mobile ethnography?

Now, I don't know what that is. So I'm guessing most people listening don't either what is mobile ethnography?

Market Research

So the two types of market research out there, so everybody's probably done surveys, which they do quantitative research, okay, so you get the pie charts, you've got structured questions, you know, five point scale. So they'll tell you, what percentage of your customers think about you. Okay, so that's a pie chart. Qualitative research is much more psychological much more is, you know, it's anthropology, sociology, psychology. So it's much more the fluffy stuff, I guess, from a research perspective. So, so mobile ethnography, and so ethnographic research is a methodology where instead of meeting somebody in the focus group, which we're all probably familiar with, and that nog refer will go and actually visit you in your home, they will visit you in your workplace, and they'll talk to you and they'll observe you cooking your dinner or, you know, going about your everyday work, for example. So it's an observational techniques, what it needs is it needs a research, it actually travelled to your place your home to your workplace, and then basically watch you and and talk to you and try and understand what you're doing what you're thinking, what you're feeling when you're doing it.

Now, Eugene, this is where it sounds like it gets kind of expensive. If you have to come and stand in front of somebody, that means you have to have an army of people going out doing the research. And that gets very expensive and puts people off.

Correct those two things, right. So it is very expensive. Probably, you're arguably one of the best forms research that you can’t scale it. Right. So you know, you have to, and the benefit is everybody's probably done focus groups. So you get a bunch of people into sitting around the table for two hours. And what's happening in that forum. That's what people and businesses typically do because it's cheaper, right? So it's cheaper to get six people come into a room and talk about something they did last week versus buying a researcher to six different locations to see what's happening now. Okay, so what we've done then, right, so it is very expensive. It's only the big brands could really afford this. And I think the great backstories are I think, you know, the Heinz squeezy bottle that came out of ethnography, right? So you know, and I thought we were standing in the kitchen, smacking the glass bottle of ketchup, you know, the squeezy bottle was something that surfaced through digital ethnography by researchers standing in somebody's home watching their behaviours, right? So it is very, very powerful. You just can't scale this. And it's very expensive. And pointedly right now you need to travel. Okay, so what we did, we started this in 2016. In an angle they say, we're taking essentially a private social networking style technology, so that the brand's research, you consider their computer in their office and interact over mobile with the consumer anywhere in real time. And instead of sitting in the kitchen, they see the consumer takes a video of what they're doing right now. So if you want to understand that somebody cooks pasta, they take a video and they show you how they do it. If you want to understand how somebody uses your website, we have a capability called mobile screen recording, where you can actually guess the consumer to record how they search Google, for example, visit your website, navigate your website, and buy on your ecommerce site. So it's very contextual and it scales you can do it anywhere in the moment in real time.

I again I have to use the big brother analogy here. You're not going to sneak into someone's kitchen and stand over their shoulder they buy into this and this is all compliant with all the rules GDPR so on so forth isn't.

Recruitment

1,000,000% right 1,000,000%. So this is not a stealthy technology. So the the remember the public is recruited, okay? So there are companies out there called recruiters, they'll source you persona. So let's say if you're if you're a bank in the UK, you're trying to understand how young professionals behave on Pay Day, you will be contacted by a recruiter probably on social media. You'll be incentivized per week to use our technology, you will assign an explicit often so everything is GDPR. compliant. Information Security is a pillar of what we do. We just been certified for HIPAA compliance in us right now for Healthcare Research. We're in the middle of an ISO 27,001 process. So everything's aboveboard, everything's super secure. So the consumer then is paid to use our app to share information with these researchers, typically over the course of a week. And then the research you consider the dashboard, watch the videos, analyse the data, and prepare the reports and everything happens remotely without the need to travel.

It makes it sound too easy, doesn't it? Because if you think about how difficult market research always has traditionally been, it's than the phone call, it's been the guy calling to the door, it's going to focus groups, which I was never a huge fan of at all the years that I've I've seen focus groups and action. This makes it easy to see what's actually happening on the ground. Which brings me to the question, Eugene, a year, the first people that actually had the brain were to think about this.

Mobile Ethnography

So we're very early in the market, for sure. Now there are in common technology. So there's been existing technologies out there for years, you know, it's been kind of online communities, which are kind of desktop chat rooms, you know, so this has been this kind of push to digitise in person research has, has probably been there for quite some time, a lot of the existing technologies that have been kind of built on desktop era. And we were quite different. I think we're very lucky because essentially, we had built entirely mobile first, our whole call, or like, what's different about us is our core technology, essentially social networking style products. Okay. And if you think about it, Jonathan, people are tapping now before they're talking, they're recording Tik Toks before they jump on the phone and talk to you, right, so what this is now, this is a mobile first technology that hit the market just at the right time, we had four years of R&D built into us. So we hit the ground running. And you know, I think I do think we're genuinely market leaders in the space now.

And the good thing is that you can deploy this anywhere globally. So it doesn't really matter, that it is a car company, but you will have international companies, from Tokyo to London to Washington, who can use your products to further their research, there really is a global element of this.

Strong International Growth

So like, literally, we're like a 96% export revenue business. So 4% of our revenues Irish. Okay. So literally, you know, and we wouldn't This is a bit cliche, but we literally have customers from Sydney to San Francisco, right. So just before the call this morning actually got, I was on the phone with KPMG in Tokyo, you know, their customer experience team got in touch, heard about his true referral from London, we're going to have a demo with them Monday morning, or in Tokyo, because they're interested in using the technology to do research over there are technologies localised into 20 different languages. It's available in every app store everywhere. So yeah, it's incredible. And you know, a lot of what we're doing now, is multi market research, you may have an agency coming out of London, representing a very large technology brand that we all use every day, trying to understand how people are using their technology in 10 different markets. So we've got a study ongoing right now, with one of the top three brands and technology that we all use every day, trying to understand their user experience across nine markets.

Okay, and again, it doesn't matter that you're an Irish company, because the way the internet works, I'm guessing you're not flying to Tokyo next week, given the current world environment that's all going to be done remotely on on Skype or Zoom or whatever format there's going to be used. So you're in the room and Tokyo without having to go to Tokyo.

The Remote Era

Yeah, so I guess you know, the room has gone online, right? The room has become virtual. So I think, like we've been selling remotely from Cork, for the last four years, three and a half years. Okay, so we've done four business flights in four years and estimate existing customers, right. So we have as a team, the ability to sell remotely. And I think actually, you know, we've been doing it anyway, probably back in the day, when we pivoted, we didn't have the funds to jump on planes, maybe. But that's how we've evolved. And I think that's the message for everybody listening here today as well, is that what this means? What's happening COVID-19 right now is that people won't need to do business anymore. So people will naturally buy and transact online over video. And when that happens, essentially, geography is history, right? So it doesn't matter where you are anymore. As long as you've got a good product, and the ability to do Zoom or Skype or Slack, you can sell anywhere.

The Technological Revolution

The running theory at the moment globally is that we will, instead of AD and BC for the next while in commerce, we're going to do pre COVID-19 and post COVID-19 as the great metrics in time. That post COVID-19 market is probably right for this kind of activity given how much of a rush there has been to use technology. Those who've never used it before are now adept at us, that those who didn't realise the capabilities that it had, are becoming familiar with it. So the technological revolution is probably being advanced by all of the chaos that's going on right now.

But I think there's two things. First of all, you know, McKinsey has been bashing on about digital transformation for the last decades been have been talking about digital transformation for the last decades. You know, if you are not online, now, as a business, you're really going to struggle. And I think what's really happened now is it's all been kind of compressed into, you know, 10 years of digital transformation, it's probably going to happen now in about three months. Okay. So a couple of things, right. We are a technology that supports digital transformation. Okay. A lot of the projects we do are existing traditional businesses trying to get online trying to digitise across mobile, desktop, omnichannel. Okay. Really, I think what's happened now is an accelerated digital transformation. But while I see this is I think this is essentially the remote revolution. Okay, this is gonna change how business gets done is changing how we work with changing how we interact. So essentially, now everything is going online. You know, the technology is there. Now, social networking, is there, everybody's connected. We're getting into 5g, hopefully, right. So video on the goal is possible now. So again, it's really, really interesting. I think it's, you know, in some businesses, it's a tsunami, but they think business can adapt and move their businesses online and sell products over the internet, even on Amazon or any other of those existing platforms, it is probably an opportunity.

Scaling Globally

Yeah. And again, you're doing this with support as well. And and you look, you mentioned KPMG, there, obviously, that kind of support is hugely important to you, as you're scaling globally, not just domestically, but globally.

Yeah. So look, I think support comes in handy. So, you know, KPMG has been phenomenal for us. Right? So, so we engage the KPMG way back in today. We're very proactive on strategy, our partners, Mike Lynch, in Cork, phenomenal, you know, I'd advise anybody to go talk to KPMG. Early, right, because what you want to do, especially when you're doing export, so like we're selling into, you know, 60 different countries. So we're actively partnering KPMG to get ahead of those markets and figure out what all the legislation and impacts are for doing business internationally. They've been huge supporters of us, they've been very patient creditors back in the day. Thank you very much. So I think so you KPMG enterprise Ireland's like these journeys, you need support. So I think enterprise are has been phenomenal as well. So they are an investor in our company, our development advisory reigai. And she was on the phone with me last night at 9pm. Right, talking about supports, so they can price are phenomenal as well. So we're very, very thankful for them.

Crazy Journey

I think the other major supporters is my wife, Caroline, around this crazy journey

Round of applause for Caroline, everybody.

Caroline, let's give props to Caroline. So she's very active in the business now trying to raise four kids and keep this going. These are kind of crazy journeys. So I think you know, as an entrepreneur, you need all those supports. And again, we're very thankful, very grateful.

But look, there's there's a good business in most people. The vast majority don't activate it, they let it fester. And an item says in the back of their head, your journey fascinates me huge drop from the young lad selling suits and saddles to going into engineering to eventually meandering your way to the point of which now you have a saleable products that that people are interested in using? How often do you have to say to yourself, no, I need to listen to this person. I need to trust that person, or how often do you say to yourself? No, actually, I need to trust myself here because I know I'm right. And someone else is wrong.

It's a very interesting question, actually. Right. So I think, you know, in business, so what I've learned, right, so in business, the only person you should be listening to is the person who's handing over cash and paying you. Alright. So you know, again, listen to your wife, right? So like, we started off this company, all of a sudden, your wife, I mean, that's a given. But like, you know, she was the one who said we should do this, right. So back in the day, and here we are, right. But I think really what I've learned is, don't listen to the people who think you've got a cool idea. Don't listen to people who say that's awesome. Listen to the people handing over the cash, right? Because the cash is the only kind of filter that matters when it comes to taking the signal from the market or not. Okay. And reading. My lesson is, we were building a product initially that people loved and wanted and that was a nice to have. But that's not a business. Now, what we have is a product product that people need. And the difference is night and day. So I think you know, and again, we are a 100% customer driven business. Right? So we've been building this the customer feedback for the last four years. I think that's why the business is growing so strongly.

Where to next?

Where does it go now? Where do you see Indeemo going next? Because again, we're in regressively we're in the middle of a very sharp economic crisis caused by COVID-19. What happens next? I mean, how confident are you for the future a bit that chaos?

Look, I think, you know, you look at all the purchasing manager indexes, right indices and like this is a tsunami, right. So I think extremely uncertain quarter ahead of us. Okay. On my my God says, you know, we've got colleagues working in China, they're back at their desks now. Okay? business as usual, okay? The cinemas are closed, okay. And they might be wearing masks in the office. But basically they're back to business. So like we my personal horizon this I said this might seem two weeks goes that's that's hunker down here for eight to 10 weeks, let's just develop a new routine. Let's get through this because, you know, we will get through it. Right. So, you know, the government have been very proactive, I think the supports that are out there absolutely necessary. I think the whole economy has been booming, right, that shouldn't change overnight, just the Commerce has really stopped. So I think we'll all the government supports people stay in business for the next six or eight weeks, it will certainly get back to normal, it'll be a new normal, but it will get back to normal, I think, long term for us personally. And business. Generally, I think this is going to change, this is an opportunity to really massively transform. So I think business needs to look at digitising need to look at some sort of an online component. And that could be as simple as using LinkedIn, right, for sales lead generation. So it's not a massive amount of work. I think, personally for us, we're very excited about the potential, like, you know, we work in foods, you know, brands like Kerry should be talking to us you work in pharmaceuticals, you look at the GSK and the Eli Lillys, you know, we're we're supporting projects right now, research in COVID-19. Universities, we got huge inbound from universities right now we're doing a project with DC UK office next week understanding the impacts of COVID-19. So so for us personally, I think it's business as usual. Hopefully, I think we'll take a hit this quarter. But I'm very, very optimistic. I think about the long term potential is and Ireland will come back Cork will come back. You know, again, the real message here, Jonathan is you can sell anywhere now. So you don't have to be in the States to sell to the state because people are talking to you in videos, the same thing people won't want to meet face to face anymore. So much. So I think now, as I say geography is history after this and I think Cork businesses can can tap into global markets just by jumping on Slack and jumping on LinkedIn.

Learn More

Eugene, if anyone is looking to find out more about the business or thinks it might be for them, what's the website? How can they contact you?

So yeah, in Indeemo.com company shelter there any businesses in Ireland looking to digitise a researcher kind of do research remotely, especially universities or farmer looking into you know, this COVID-19 situation? We're very keen to support them there. The other thing is we're hiring. We're looking for salespeople, we're looking for ups Customer Success engineers and we'd appreciate if people could reach out

Eugene, a fascinating journey. Thank you for bringing his honours with you and we wish you and the team and Indeemo the Very Best of luck into the future.

Awesome. JOHN, it has been a pleasure. Thank you very much.

Bye Thanks to Eugene and all the team as Indeemo on the very best of luck to them in the future as they continue to navigate the waters ahead of us all. I will catch you on the next one.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai