Not hearing no - Eimear O'Carroll

00:00

So it's been the privilege of my life to work with Rhona every day. It's definitely one of the best things about coming to work in the morning. And I have the greatest respect for solo founders, but I do not fathom how they do it.

00:14

Where did you meet Rhona?

00:15

So we both went to secondary school or high school together, and we had mutual friends for the first couple of years of school, kind of knew of each other, saw each other every so often, but never had had enough of a conversation to know that we would be great friends, really. We just had a lot of mutual friends and then there was one day in particular that we showed up... We are from a very small town in the west of Ireland, where there is nothing to do. So the thing you did was go to town, hang out and maybe buy a coffee for 2 euro. And that was about the height of it for the day, but you're a teenager, so hanging out for six hours and over one coffee is-

00:58

Sounds good.

00:59

... allowable. Well, maybe not. The staff might not have agreed to be honest, but there was one day where most of all of our mutual friends just either were running late or didn't show up for some reason. And we were just kind of sitting chatting. And I think by the end of that afternoon, we sort of knew that we would be best friends because we just had so much in common. And just, yeah, we really clicked on a lot of similar things, made each other laugh, which is key in this business, as well you got to be able to laugh at yourself and at the things that are flung at you.

01:36

So yeah, at that point, I think we were in our third year, so you're about 15 and we had another three full years of secondary school at that point. So then over those next few years, we worked together. We were both really interested in science and physics and music in particular, we really bonded over music. I used to play the drums in a terrible indie band, which Rhona, that's how you know she's a great friend actually subjected herself to listening to and attending the gigs of.

02:08

So we kind of bonded over music in physics and then started working in projects for what's called the BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition. It's a massive science fair in Ireland, people from all over the Ireland take part. And we worked on two different projects over two years of our last two years in secondary school. And the second one of those was the first product that we launched, then when we went to found the business, which is the sound therapy for people who have tinnitus or ringing in the ears. So I've actually had it all my life, but I don't think I realized what it was until we started looking at it. And Rhona had it on and off as well. And we started looking into it kind of based on what we had already learned about kind of the ear and how people hear, how people perceive different sounds. And we developed a sound therapy for tinnitus that is still available today.

03:09

And in terms of kind of how the business started, it was because we were falling between this gap. We were in our final year of secondary school. We were about to do our Leaving Cert, just like the A levels. And we weren't in university yet, so we couldn't get funding from that kind of pool. And we were leaving the secondary school environment, so we couldn't get funding from that sort of area either. And it was suggested to us by the local enterprise office, real heroes in our story, they were such a phenomenal support and still are, in many anyway. And they suggested to us that a great way to continue our research, continue funding the research and development of the therapy and of the product would be to start a business and sell the therapy to people who could use it and access it. And as a way of funding people actually being able to access it too, because this is the thing we really want to distribute it and get it out there and have it help people. But of course that takes infrastructure, it takes some money and we weren't really sure how to do that.

04:07

So they suggested we set up a business, which we did the month before we sat our Leaving Cert. We were 18. And I don't know, we knew very little getting into it. There's no doubt about that.

04:20

What are the chances that you both have tinnitus, that is-

04:26

It's actually very common.

04:28

Really?

04:28

So about 10% of people have it full-time or sort of on a more long term basis. And then the vast majority of people will experience it after a concert or being in a nightclub, that sort of ringing, buzzing, you get, which is as a result of damaging your hearing. But it's almost rare that you wouldn't experience that if you are exposed to very loud noise or loud music.

04:58

Is it at all genetic or is it by your experiences?

05:04

This is one of the tricky things about tinnitus and developing solutions for it, it's not all caused in the same way. There are some people who would have things like meniere's disease, which is a combination of vertigo and tinnitus, which would have different... I think that can be genetic, but I don't want to say that for sure.

05:23

So there are sometimes people who would have it because of genetics, but a lot of it is gained through damaged hearing and exposure to loud noise. So a lot of people as well, like a lot of our customers would have worked in very noisy environments, maybe worked in noisy factories. We have a lot of pilots or ex-pilots in some cases, they're customers of ours and where they did have hearing protection, if they even did have hearing protection at work, it wasn't good enough for the levels they were being exposed to. And that was actually where the idea for our second product Sound Bounce came from, which is an advanced acoustic material. So it has smart response of properties that reduce the noise in the environment. And it was as a response to speaking with and understanding the experience of so many people who have worked in really noisy environments and just not had enough protection.

06:26

What's it been like building a company with your best friend?

06:29

So it's been the privilege of my life to work with Rhona every day. It's definitely one of the best things about coming to work in the morning. And I have the greatest respect for solo founders, but I do not fathom how they do it. It just seems wild to me that people don't have that support in a co-founder. And to have your co-founder be your best friend is even better for sure.

06:54

We understand how each other works really well, which I think is very relevant to our conversation today. Rhona and I work together really well. We compliment each other's skill sets and kind of attitudes even to work sometimes, or the way we approach things can be a little bit different, but in a very complimentary way. And that has definitely stood to benefit us over the years. And I think it's not easy running a business. There's great times and there's bad times, but having a support network there and kind of having someone to work with and work through the bad bits and to enjoy the good bits, because that's really important too, to celebrate when things go well, is a great part of having a co-founder and having such a great relationship at work.

07:54

Is it the friendship that's so important or is it the skillset and the symmetry?

08:03

That's a good question and an interesting question. I think it probably is both. I think our personalities, we know exactly what the other one is thinking most of the time without even talking. So we have a really deep understanding of the other person and their perspective, and also how to communicate with one another, because of course communication is key in any business, as well in any working relationship. So the friendship definitely helps with that. And then the fact that we have sort of complimentary approach to things, I think also helps the balance of the business and the balance of how we go about making decisions and everything as well.

08:51

So we've worked together for a really long time, so we've quite a similar outlook on things in a way, but we can both look at things from a slightly different angle and kind of flesh out the problem, we're physicists at heart, right? We take very big problems, break them down into small pieces, solve all the small pieces, put it all back together again, and then you've solved your big problem. That's the kind of core principle in solving a problem in physics. And that's, I think a lot of the way we approach business and that's stood us reasonably well so far.

09:23

It's interesting that being a co-founder is probably one of the only jobs, although this is changing a lot where you share it, where you do it with someone else as a job share in part, and it's seen as society, in a way that's beneficial or like a good thing, because the role of a founder is so big that how can it even be done by one person, whereas perhaps other jobs, we don't see it quite like that. And we think it can be done by one person. What do you think are the dangers or the potential pitfalls in sharing a job with someone?

10:12

I think even the turn of phrase sharing a job is interesting. I don't know if I'd really thought about it in that sense, because I think of our jobs in a way as quite distinct, even though we're sort of co-leaders or joint leaders of the business. We collaborate on a lot and we also work on several parts of the business a lot. And I think that helps as well, that we have a very clear sense of what we work on and we are never shy in getting help or getting the other person to weigh in. And that doesn't even mean that you get the final decision on the piece that you're working on, but we have sort of carved out or have a really clear understanding of what we do and what we work on best and then kind of work on those aspects of the business more so than others.

11:09

And in terms of sharing, again, it all comes down to communication. You just have to have very open lines of communication with each other, no matter who you're sharing a role with, I think, even I'm sure this is the case for people who do things like job sharing as well. You have to be really tight on your handover and make sure that the other person is really well briefed on what's going on and has enough context to weigh in. And I think having a really deep understanding of how each of us prefers to communicate is also really helpful. Like I always like mind map things, Rhona will write it down in a spreadsheet. We might be writing the same things, but we both have to kind of think it out in a slightly different way. And that's just one example of, we have slightly different communication styles in that sense, but we totally understand the other person's communication style. So we can kind of work through that and get the benefit of both of those.

12:11

And I think shared values are really as well, if you're going to share a role with someone and particularly in a role like this, it doesn't stop at 5:00 PM. It's not all consuming, but it is all encompassing. And it does touch a lot of aspects of our lives and our roles are completely broad reaching across the business. So having a joint view on the business, a joint vision for the business, what we're working towards, what we're trying to achieve and making sure to check in on that every so often as well, and to make sure that we're on the same page on that front, or maybe we want to tweak the vision because we have learned some new information or tweaked the plan, the sort of longer term plans for the business, because we know more now than we knew yesterday or a week ago or a month ago or six months ago, which is always the case in startup. New information is coming in everyday, new understandings of the technology, new experimental results, things that will have a knock on effect for how we want to run the business.

13:21

But at the core, our values are aligned on what we're trying to do, what we're trying to build, the type of business we want to build, the kind of ubiquity of the acoustic material we're trying to build. We have designed an acoustic material that we want to be the next ubiquitous acoustic material. It can and will be in everything from cars, planes, buildings, dishwashers, and that's where we're trying to get to and having that alignment on the vision is really important.

14:00

One of the other fascinating parts about your story is that it started so early and hasn't changed, or I'm sure the business has changed a whole load, but you've remained singularly focused on this one target and since 2009, when you first started it, you even graduated from Edinburgh 2014 and then are still doing it today. What's kept you and what's given use that singular focus over that longer period of time. And less to do with the business itself, but from a personal point of view, it must have been so difficult to not look other ways and think, "Well, what if I want to see what it's like to work inside another company?"

14:54

Yeah, it has been a sort of a singular mission in a lot of ways, but also the mission has changed and adapted a little bit. And I would say we are obviously not the same people we were when we were 15, quite different from it. And I think we have had the good fortune of being able to grow in that vision and grow in our roles as well. We have always understood potential of the technologies that we've developed, the potential to help people with the technologies, the potential to create a quieter world, to have less noise pollution. Ultimately in a way, doing ourselves out of business, if Sound Bounce is in every piece of heavy machinery, equipment in a factory and the factory isn't very, there hopefully won't be too many people that get tinnitus at work, but that's the ideal view in our sense, half of everyone who gets hearing damage in their lifetime, it was avoidable. And that's a lot of people that don't need to be having long term problems in the way that they are.

16:16

So I think we've at a core, been motivated by the opportunity to help people and kind of bring our technology to fruition, but to also see something out in the real world, there's a reason that we're not academic researchers, that we are entrepreneurs. We are trying to bring this technology to the market and to products and to people's lives. I personally think I'm very motivated by seeing it realized and actualized and getting to the end of that journey, bringing a new material to market is a long journey. So I think you have to be very kind of okay with the length of that journey.

16:54

So, as I said, I was in Edinburgh, both Rhona and I went to college to study physics Rhona was in University College Dublin, and I was the University of Edinburgh. And we were working on the business part-time while we were doing that, which was challenging. But we managed to kind of keep it maintained.

17:11

And in my time in Edinburgh, I had a couple of kind of part-time jobs and things. So I have worked casually if you will elsewhere, but yeah, I've never had another kind of permanent role somewhere, a full-time position somewhere. Well, we were looking for funding in, it would've been 2012, 2013 when we were trying to bring the technology on another level and do more studies. And we had filed our patents already a couple of years ago, but there was a lot more of the sort of initial feasibility of the technology to be understood and getting that funding was the real key kind of tipping point. It did enable me to be able to come back full-time. And all credit due to Rhona, it was her that raised that money.

18:14

She had left UCD at that point to become our CEO because the business was just getting busier and busier. And that was the decision that was made at the time, which I think worked out really, really well. But that funding did enable us to sort of formalize the business in a way and create a few roles in it that we could take up as co-founders and actually have enough money to live just about, but also to have enough money to kind of work on the business full-time in a way that it had never really been given that level of attention. And I think that's really when it kicked off in a more serious way first when Rhona went full-time. And then when I came full-time, actually our first employee started two days before me. And she always likes to remind me that she's been working longer than I have in a way.

19:12

I think in a way as well, it is because every day is different. So it's not boring to work on this, nothing is ever dull. It's many things, but you can never accuse being a co-founder of being dull. And that's very exciting. And there have been so many opportunities in this role to grow and to become a better leader and a different leader, and to understand things to a deeper level and to operate at a higher level in terms of international business. And that has meant that the singular focus on the mission has never been disinteresting or not stimulating.

20:00

Has it been any different for you, do you think being a female founding pair than if you would have been a male founding pair or even a male founder on their own?

20:13

Yeah, I'm sure it has been, I don't have the opposite experience, so I can't speak from both points of view, but there aren't very many double female co-founding pairs out there. And certainly, just even when you look at the statistics, when I think, is it like 2% of venture capital money goes to female founders or double female founded teams or it's even less, I think if you've got two female founders, I don't remember the exact statistics off the top of my head, but it's almost no money goes to female founded companies with both founders. So it's definitely been a different experience.

21:01

We know from talking to friends of ours who are male co-founders, they get asked different questions when they go to pitch, we get asked a lot whether we fight all the time or the sort of presumption of women being caddy or bitchy or whatever. And we don't, which is lovely. But we know from asking male co-founders, if they don't get asked that question, that the presumption is they have a professional working relationship and they would never do anything such as fall out. And I've seen a lot of them fall out, but there is of course a different experience.

21:41

It depends who you get in the room, attitudes are changing all the time. I'd say it's better now than it was three years ago. It's a lot better now than it was set years ago. It is getting better. It's not getting better at the pace it should be getting better, but I think as well representation is a big part of that as well. And kind of seeing more women in leadership roles, seeing women bringing their businesses to fruition, be that kind of floating on the stock market or selling the business, or maintaining the business in a serious way for long, long time, whatever that success looks like to that person, but seeing women at the helm of businesses as they reach that level of maturity is really important. And certainly we would be very inspired by a number of women, both here in Ireland and abroad that are doing that.

22:35

And I think looking behind us as well, we're also really conscious of supporting other women founders and particularly technical women founders in their earlier journey, if we can help or point them in the right direction of people we know can help, we always will do that. In our hiring and in building a team, we have a lot of technical experts on our team, on the research team, in particular, the team I lead. And we're always on the lookout it for women or kind of people who are typically less represented in a deep tech way.

23:23

And that's not easy, I would say. There's still even coming through universities and PhD programs and everything, not loads of women in mathematical modeling or chemistry or material science. But I think we know that people have looked to people on our team to be inspired in their own career journeys and looking like, "Okay, I can go and get my PhD in chemistry and come work for a startup and a startup founded by women even better." If that's something that someone wants to do. So demonstrating that example, I think is really important and supporting women in STEM and technology and within our own business, making sure that everyone in our business of course is supported, but that the women are supported as well. And that the people from disadvantaged backgrounds and such and minorities that are all represented and supported and encouraged to build on their careers in whatever way they want to.

24:30

A lot of people are told no too much. And if you hear it too often, sometimes you might take it to heart. I think one of the jobs, of course, again, of a co-founder is to not really listen too much when people say no, but that comes with practice as well. So we do always really try to build up our team members and make sure that they understand how great they are and that they can take on bigger roles within the business or kind of grow with the business as well as we're going to enter a new phase later in the year and bring on more people.

25:05

I think one of the things that we struggle with most in work today is imposter syndrome. And I think a large part of that comes from our having really appropriate role models that are being authentic and genuine with their journey. But it is just so much harder for those in minorities to access those types of people. And therefore it's way more likely that they will have a great sense of imposter syndrome. For you yourself, to what extent have you dealt with imposter syndrome? And my second question would be, who have you looked up to as a role model in someone that you've wanted to emulate in some way?

26:00

Yeah, I think it's impossible to avoid imposter syndrome entirely, but I think the further we get into this journey and the greater conference I grow in as a leader and as a co-founder and as a CTO, that lessons of course. And I think part of it as well is just understanding why do you think you're an imposter in this space? Is it because you haven't seen anyone else like you do it? Well, that's worth interrogating, or is it that you don't actually have maybe the exact technical skills that you feel you might need for that space? Then, okay, that's a problem to solve and maybe those can be acquired or maybe it's having the right support or mentors or advisors in that space.

26:56

So I think it's okay to feel it for a minute, but interrogating why exactly feeling it and why in that exact situation you're feeling it is very worthwhile. And then I think to some extent, maybe it's not always warranted to feel it, the imposter syndrome. Then if you're thinking, is the only reason I'm feeling this, I can't see anyone else in this room who looks like me, which happens all the time. In the majority, we'll attend kind of advanced materials events, composites events, things like this, not sort of sexy tech events where everyone has the hot new software, it's very industrial in nature. And where I think the sort of software tech space has come on a lot for women, or at least it seems like that to me, looking at it from the outside in. The material space is still very, very male dominated. It's still very white, it's still very middle class. It's not changed that much yet. It's changing a little bit, but it will not be rare to enter a room of a 100 people and there'll be less than five women in there. That's just not rare in the world that we are in.

28:20

But in those cases you've no less right to be in that room than anyone else. And you might be a whole lot better than a lot of the people in that room. You just going to have to tell yourself that and buck up and press on because the imposter syndrome while I don't want to invalidate anyone's feelings, it's not necessarily useful unless it's the case where maybe there's a skill you need or an introduction that you need made or something like that can be maybe actioned on, and resolved. In terms of women that I look up to or people that I look up to, one answer of course is Rhona, because I think she has the greatest resolve of anyone I've ever met. She's just so tenacious and so dogging in her pursuit of the vision that I'm just always impressed at how resolute she is. And she's a brilliant CEO for that reason.

29:20

That must be fuckin hard being in the middle of nowhere. Out in Ireland, not in the middle of nowhere, but just out. And how do you access these types of people in the middle of London, let alone somewhere else?

29:36

Definitely access is a thing because, we do most of our business either in Europe or increasingly Japan, in the material space. And there's not really much kind of heavy industry materials business in Ireland. Certainly there's very few women in that business, there's not too many women to look up to. In terms of looking at leaders though, we have been taking part recently in the Creative Destruction Lab. It's a program run out of Toronto and it's all about encouraging and helping and mentoring, advanced materials companies.

30:14

There was a woman I met through that Dr. Jill Becker, who was really impressive. She's a founder CEO running an amazing materials business using AI and chemistry to create really smart new materials. And in the Irish sector as well, we have people like Ciara Clancy, who I think is so really blazing a trail in the area of, well, her first product was around Parkinson's and then moving on to other opportunities in the med-tech space, but building a really big business out of Ireland and doing so in a very internationally focused way, which is definitely something that we are trying to do as well.

31:12

When you were talking about all the experiences that you go through being in a male dominated industry, the way that you phrased it and the way that you spoke about it was almost as if those moments of difficulty and stress were motivating you in some way, rather than putting you off. How do you go about day-to-day figuring out what your internal motivations are versus your external motivations are, how much of you starting the company is an internal motive versus an external motive?

31:56

I think it's probably a combination, certainly on the external motive, the desire to bring a technology to the world that help people and make the world quieter is a big one. The internal motivations, I think, are more on the side of building something and seeing something through, from an idea to a product, to something real, something that people can use, that sense of completement, that sense of kind of achieving something practical with an idea that you had. I think that's probably an internal motivator, and I don't know if it was kind of around the time of founding the business, but certainly in continuing to work on the business and in the business is the internal motivator to work on important problems.

33:00

I don't know if I could kind of sit at a desk every day and do something that I personally found to be dull. That's no disrespect meant to anyone's own work or their own job, but I would need to find something interesting and challenging and stimulating to keep doing it every day. There's got to be a reason, some excitement to get up in the morning and get to work. And, yeah, I don't know, to be honest, if I think about the internal and external motivations on a day-to-day basis, I think it's more when you maybe reach the end a certain period in the business, or kind of a point of inflection that you kind of start to think, "Well, why exactly are we doing that?"

33:51

But I don't think being in a room full of men in the materials industry, it's not a motivator. I also don't find it unmotivating at this point because it is thoroughly unsurprising to me, at some point you just get a bit used to it. It is still something I'd love to change. And I would actually say the composites industry, particularly in north America is really making some strides on this. I attended a great event at the CAMX show in Texas, in last October, we were nominated for a best new innovation award at CAMX. And the Women in Composites organization was founded in the last couple of years and there really supporting, and kind of trying to bring more women from other industries into composites, but then also kind of encourage them and support them in their careers through composites kind of network with women.

34:56

And the women that I met at some of those events were from all levels of organizations. There was a woman she's a co-CEO with her brother. It's a family business. And I wish I could remember her name because she was excellent. And I'd like to give her a shout out as well of the inspirational women, but there was other people who were just starting out. They just started in composite maybe six months ago and they were just getting going. And that kind of network, they're really trying to make changes in that industry. And I think they're already starting to see the fruits of that. So it doesn't take that long if people are making the effort. And I'd love to see more of that in Europe, that we would make the effort to bring more people into the advanced materials industry because there's loads of great people out there that could be working in it, but maybe need to be shown the opportunities in it or shown that there's a path into it.

35:52

How would you recommend that someone accesses some of those groups, so that those Women in Composites, how does someone go about finding Women in Composites and accessing those types of resources?

36:10

Yeah. So I think any of those trade events, if you're in a sort of a similar industry already, and you're going to those trade events, increasingly now there are either meetups or networking events at those expos where there's a sort of a focus on either women or people who are typically not represented in that industry, so that's one way. I think LinkedIn has some good groups and things on these industries as well. And then Hello Tomorrow would be another one. They have a good newsletter if you're looking to get into the more startup side of things. They would work with a lot of deep tech startups, Hello Tomorrow is based out of France, but has a very international focus and just signing up to their newsletter, I think would be a good idea if people are looking for kind of opportunities in the deep tech space, opportunities that are open. I believe they have a kind of a jobs board as well.

37:15

So yeah, I think in keeping an eye on the start up news locally, within either your own city, although increasingly remote work is becoming an option for people. So maybe even looking beyond that into your time zone is a way to go about it. But I think if you're in a certain industry Googling women in X, you'll hopefully quickly enough turn up some of the relevant groups or even maybe some of the people that are trying to start a relevant group and tap into them there.

37:51

Thank you so much for sharing your story. Not only is it incredible that you started it so early, the power of quiet is something that I think will resonate with so many other people and what you're doing hopefully will make such a difference. So thank you for sharing it.