it@cork have been doing an excellent job in Cork so it was no surprise that they managed to get Jerry Kennelly, of Stockbyte fame, to speak at their ‘Midsummer networking event’ last night.

For those of you who don’t know the story Kennelly, a former photojournalist, setup a photographic image company in Kerry in 1996. He grew it to become the third largest stock photography supplier in the world eventually selling the company for $135M to Getty Images.

At the time of the sale, he had 100% ownership of the company having bought out the VC share (approx 30%) beforehand (that’s a story I’d like to have heard). So Kennelly can afford to be brutally honest, and he is. Not long after the sale I heard Kennelly describe the banks in Ireland as ‘bastards’ on live radio. Often said in private, rarely said so publicly.

His family started a newspaper business (still running) in Kerry when he was a child which is how he got into the photo-journalism business. He realised that technology was radically changing the media world. After understanding the money that had been made from VHS he correctly bet that digital photography on CDs was the way to go.

Possibly like a lot of others I had heard about the company but just assumed that Stockbyte were a clearinghouse for stock images which they bought from freelance photographers. Turns out that the majority of Stockbytes then portfolio was created internally. They had teams of photographers and art directors who planned for months photo-shoots in locations all over the world. A huge amount of planning went to each photo-shoot since they were so costly but the more interesting aspect of that was how customer driven they were. As a company much smaller than existing competitors they were shameless in trying to engage their customers and getting feedback from them. He and his team were very, very focused on giving their customers what they wanted and making their lives easier.

I’m not sure if he said it directly but from his talk you understood that he built a fantastic team around him in what sounded like a great working environment. When the deal was done to sell the company one of the first things he did was write all his staff some serious thank-you checks!

Some points from his talk:

• Work in high-margin businesses - it allows you to make mistakes.
• Scale fast and keep it lean.
• Appear bigger than you actually are.
• Put a huge effort into understanding your customer (and getting all your staff to do the same).
• Instincts matter

Not only is it great to see somebody having done so well locally it’s great to see them willing to talk so openly about their own experiences.

Thanks to Donal Manning and Catherine Wall at it@cork for organising the event and Murphys-Heineken Brewery for hosting!