Stephenson is in the start-up game for the challenge not the pay-off, he tells SiliconRepublic.com.
Brian Stephenson grew up in a business-y environment. His parents had their own businesses – a car dealership and petrol pumps. Despite seeing the ups and downs that came with running a business in Ireland in the ’80s, he always knew he wanted to create something of his own.
He would go on to create several of his own businesses. Starting with True North Metrics in 2007, a start-up that provided customer and employee engagement solutions, and ZinMobi, a mobile marketing tech company in 2010.
Eight years later, he founded NoteCloud, a start-up that specialised in delivering digital products to improve business processes and customer experience.
His latest venture, Stingray Labs, was launched in 2023. It is co-founded by Stephenson and Mike Stack, his lifelong friend and a solicitor.
Stringray Labs, based in Tralee, Co Kerry, is a venture studio focused on the legal and financial services industry.
Their first venture out of Stingray is Beam, a collaboration with Orbitus Law, which aims to simplify the home-buying process. Stephenson leads strategy at the new venture.
“My main role is taking ideas and testing them in the marketplace – working closely with our marketing, product and technology teams. This involves research, building products and creating brands. If we get traction in the market, we scale them up,” he says.
According to him, a huge roadblock when it comes to the legal services industry is client expectations. Beam addresses this by investing “heavily” in technology and training, Stephenson says.
The start-up also heavily leans into artificial intelligence (AI) tech for many of its aspects. AI, Stephenson says, is going to “radically change professional services”.
“We’re all-in on AI. We use AI right across our business. For our technology team, AI is helping to speed up software development. For our operations team, we’re streamlining workflows and on the service side it’s helping us respond quicker to customer queries,” he says.
“With the growth of AI, knowledge work is going to change irrevocably in the coming years, and we see massive opportunities in professional services, especially in the legal sector.”
Balance is key
Having been around business people all his life, Stephenson is aware of the ebbs and flows that come with running a start-up. “There are many times in the evolution of a start-up when the team needs to put the shoulder to the wheel,” he says.
“The winters in Kerry can be long, so in recent years I’ve tended to put in long hours over winter so that I can ease off a little over the summer and enjoy the outdoors with friends and family.
“With the 50th birthday looming, I’m also spending a lot more time on my health and wellbeing and this definitely helps to bring balance to my day, and to my head.”
Despite being in a field that views material success as key, Stephenson says that he is not afraid of failure. This perspective, he says, he got through his travels in Asia.
“The Western obsession with materialism isn’t making us happy. As a result, I’m not materialistic, so business risk and potential failure doesn’t scare me.
“There will always be opportunities. I like business for the challenge, it’s like an interesting puzzle.”
One challenge he needs to tackle are his own communication skills, he says. “I think it’s by far the most important and least understood skill in business. Poor communication is the root of many problems in the business world.
“With so many communication mediums these days it can be a minefield. Poor communication internally leads to misalignment. Poor external communication impacts sales and partnerships. It’s an area where we’re investing a lot of time and energy.”
The best piece of career advice he ever received was to “beware of the dark underbelly of optimism”.
“Grit and positivity are really important business skills, provided they don’t overshadow reality. I’ve been in situations where hope and fear of failure clouded my judgement.”
“A mentor once told me that failing fast is far better than failing slow,” he says.
You need to be “ruthless”, Stephenson says, when it comes to your business ideas and make sure you’re meeting a real need in the market.
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