Walked out this morning towards the Liffey River with a spring in my step. It’s late spring in Dublin but frankly, it feels like winter to me. The hood I am in – Grand Canal Dock, nickname Silicon Docks – represents the new face of Dublin, the home for innovation and start-ups and the new Masters of the Universe such as Google, Twitter, Airbnb and Facebook.
Grand Canal Dock in the morning light
Early risers, like me, are walking briskly to ward off the chill. The sensible ones are wrapped up. The brave ones are in jogging gear, their pale legs red with the cold. Everyone is lost in their own world, headphones plugged in.
The connected, yet disconnected generation.
I’ve got Paolo Nutini in my head singing of lost love. It seems appropriate. The Irish like to sing of dead love actually, if my previous night’s exposure to Irish songs is any indication, from Molly Malone to The Wild Rover. (Look up the lyrics and you’ll know what I mean.)
Last night, CarTrawler took us to Jameson Whiskey Distillery to learn about how whiskey is distilled, and why Irish whiskey is the best (of course). It was the fastest tour in history – perhaps the guide had been warned we were of the ADD breed, online travel folks, you know.
Like Guinness, Jameson started off as a family business and stayed with the family for four generations until mid-1960s. The main ingredients of whiskey are yeast, barley and water and we were whisked from chamber to chamber, following the process until the final part when the whiskey is left to distill and that’s when you get the difference between ordinary and extraordinary. I saw a bottle of Jameson Reserve that was priced at €50,000.
I don’t think we were given that for the whiskey tasting session. In any case, after several attempts, I still wasn’t able to tell one whiskey from another – Irish, Scotch or American.
But the night left an indelible impression in my head – this is the Ireland of old. Men who made whiskey, told stories, sang, danced and drank.
Fast forward to Silicon Docks and this is the new face – young, techie, wired. CarTrawler is a good example of Irish entrepreneurship which has crossed over into the new world.
It started off as a car hire business, Argus Car Hire, and the father handled it over to his two sons, Niall and Greg Turley, who saw what was coming and transformed it into a B2B platform for car rentals in 2004. It’s an incredible success story. In 2001, they made around €80m from the sale of a stake to ECI but kept a 25% stake. Last year, BC Partners bought out ECI and the Turleys for €110m.
For the last two years, CarTrawler has been in Classon House, Dundrum Business Park, a development that went bust during the last property bubble and so they got the rent at a pretty good rate. It now has about 400 staff, 40 nationalities, 54% women, a very young demographic.
Working spaces are cool and colourful. Inspirational signs dot the walls. There’s a corner where teams gather and, for want of a better word, locked up for weeks when something new needs developing – part of the company’s attempt to keep a start-up culture as it grows.
There’s an interactive map of the world where names of customers pop up when they book a CarTrawler vehicle. The bulk of transactions are in Europe but the company is keen to expand to Asia and Middle East, and works with partners like AirAsia where it is seeing decent conversions on car rentals.
CarTrawler itself is facing disruption from the sharing economy – they have to figure out how to deal or work with companies like Uber, HailO, GrabTaxi or BlaBla Car that are popping up all over the world.
And as it did years ago when it transformed from a car hire company to a marketplace, it now has to figure out its path in the new, newer world.
Silicon Docks is Dublin’s hopes of taking part in the new, newer world. This area south of the Canal used to be wasteland. There’s a road called Misery Hill and the taxi driver told me it’s called such because this is where they used to execute people.
Today, there are swanky offices, art pieces and cool cafes – I am writing this in Il Valentino and there’s a steady stream of cool people (with headphones) coming in for their coffee. The modern Bord Gais Energy theatre dominates the square where American landscape artist Martha Schwartz has planted huge, red sticks onto the ground, making me think of giant chopsticks.
The hotel I am in, The Marker (below), is hip and trendy. The wifi switches on as easily as you turn the taps, no login, no password. Unlike most design hotels, its rooms are actually functional – you don’t knock your knees on unexpected corners and you can actually sit on the chairs. The staff are young, helpful and attentive.
In many ways, Dublin reminds me of Singapore. It sits in a small market – 4-5 million people. It’s reinventing itself, trying to find a place in the new economy and it’s betting on the IT sector. In the past, it was hard for Irish brands to scale. Today, the web gives smart companies unfettered access to a global market. The difference is Ireland seems more welcoming of foreign talent than Singapore has been in recent years.
CarTrawler is proof you can use technology to cross the divide between product and distribution. Now the challenge is how it rides out the disruption ahead.
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