E313: Six people. €10 BILLION traded. Now MartEye is taking on America. With a little help from Portershed
That Great Business ShowShow Notes
SIX people. More than 120 marts. Over €10 BILLION worth of livestock and related products traded through their platform. And now they’re taking on America.
How on earth does a team that small build something that big? Conall Ó Móráin meets Ciarán Feeney and Margaret Monaghan of MartEye, alongside Mary Rodgers, CEO of Galway’s PorterShed—the startup hub helping ambitious businesses make the connections to grow. When Covid shut the marts, MartEye had TWO WEEKS to build a working product. Customers needed it. Customers paid. And they’ve been building ever since. Today, farmers can bid from their children’s football matches. A buyer in New York can buy cattle for a farm in Tipperary. And an unexpected enquiry from Missouri has opened the door to America’s sale barns.
Margaret’s first American trip? Turkeys, the Amish community and a table full of hunting rifles. Not quite the welcome she’d imagined. We get into: • Getting customers paying before the product was “fully baked”. • The American opportunity: roughly 1,100 sale barns, according to Ciarán. • Why MartEye has declined approaches from industry investors. • The reality of supporting customers at THREE in the morning. • Why PorterShed protects its engineers—and makes introductions count. • The microphone mistake that broadcast Margaret into an Italian auction. • And selling Michael O’Leary’s pedigree Angus cattle. Customers. Cash. Control. And an Irish business with its eyes on a much bigger market.
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