Podcast Ep 325: How a Cork husband and wife team built one of Ireland’s fastest scaling businesses. Otonomee founders Aidan and Hilary O’Shea discuss the founding principles that sparked a $20m business empire.
In just five years, husband and wife team Aidan and Hilary O’Shea have built a business that now employs more than 650 people worldwide with revenues that are understood to have surged beyond $20m
When the couple started Otonomee in Cork in 2021, they were convinced that the global call centre industry was struggling to keep pace with how people actually wanted to work. There’s some logic in this – at the time the world was in lock-down and today people are fiercely defending the privilege of hybrid working.
“By having global teams listening and reacting, and sending data back to our clients, we can be first responders in terms of market intelligence”
The difference is Otonomee is entirely remote-first. “We’re a customer support outsourcing business,” says Aidan. “We provide the people and the technology to help other companies run and scale their customer support operations.”
Rather than replicate the traditional customer support model of large office-based operations, they built a company designed around remote work from day one. That approach is now underpinning a business with international ambitions that supports global clients across sectors that include tech, e-commerce and financial services.
The customer support model was broken … and they fixed it
-
Listen to the ThinkBusiness Podcast for business insights and inspiration. All episodes are here. You can also listen to the Podcast on:
-
Spotify
-
SoundCloud
-
Apple
Initially Aidan O’Shea, a veteran of the customer support industry, was looking to change industry. He believed the model was broken and the industry had lost its way.
“I felt there were a lot of challenges with outsourcing – AI and automation were hanging out there as a threat, and then there was the war for talent. It was really hard to get people and keep good people. Then Covid-19 hit in 2020 and everyone was sent home.
“The working from home model surprised a lot of people – it proved it could work. People could be efficient, effective and trusted. The technology also got a lot better. We developed the idea to set up an outsourcing business purely operated on a work-from-home model. That meant we could hire from much wider talent pools and scale internationally much quicker. Even here in Cork we have Apple and Amazon competing for good people – so hiring from outside the cities reduced that competition.”
From its earliest stages, Otonomee invested heavily in tooling, training and management practices designed specifically for distributed teams rather than retrofitting office based systems.
That philosophy has helped the business attract experienced customer support professionals who had previously left the sector due to inflexible working conditions.
This has meant retention and engagement have become central metrics based on the logic that lower attrition ultimately delivers better outcome for clients.
The company’s B Corp certification also reflects this emphasis on environmental, social governance (ESG), making Otonomee a values-led alternative in a sector associated with burnout and offshoring pressures.
“Covid probably opened the door for the opportunity and sparked the flame for Aidan and me to think about it,” says Hilary. “Our backgrounds were very different – Aidan had 20-plus years in the industry, and mine was law. Geography was always key. We all went to the city where the job was, rather than choosing where you wanted to live and work.
“When we found ourselves being sent home from the office, we really thought: wouldn’t this remote offering solve a lot of problems – for people and for clients? We also felt that if we provided the best environment for people, gave them the autonomy and choice of where to live and work, we could attract great talent and keep great talent. That in turn would be a positive for our partners. We could scale rapidly. We’re now 650 people across four continents. We became a B Corp in 2023. Those founding pillars have really formed what Otonomee is now.”
How to scale with purpose
Otonomee’s growth has been supported by Enterprise Ireland, which backed the company as it scaled its export-led model. In 2023 Otonomee raised $1.6m in seed funding in a round led by Martello Group, providing capital to expand its client base and invest further in operational systems.
Since then the company has continued to add international customers while broadening its management team and support functions. The founders have indicated that the business is now preparing for its next stage of growth with plans to raise a further $2m in funding.
This they say will support a targeted expansion into the US where demand for outsourced customer experience services remains strong, particularly among high-growth digital and subscription-based businesses.
The world of business has transformed massively thanks to digital with new ways of working like growth hacking and inbound selling making businesses sharper but also heightening customer experiences.
“The world is changing rapidly and continues to change,” Aidan explains. “Even with AI – every week there’s a new release and it’s disrupted the market again. But if you can get your head around it and you’re in it, there are opportunities. What we saw starting a business from Cork is that the world is a lot smaller. Around 90% of our business comes from international customers.
“For an early stage company it’s one thing to have that ambition, but actually being able to do it – that’s where the remote model delivers. A lot of our customers are remote too. We can get to them without being on their doorstep. We can build teams globally, be in their time zone, be in their location for regulatory reasons if needed.”
Defining the customer-first future of business
I suggest that being a fully remote business without the headaches of property and other such fixed assets enables Otonomee to sidestep the geopolitical shocks currently impacting the business world.
“You’re right in some respects,” Hilary says. “We’ve built this business as fully remote – and that was actually very challenging to do at the time. We didn’t have a model to follow. We sat down and designed the business from the ground up, and we operate with a different mindset than you would in an in-office environment. Our clients are predominantly US-based, but also European.
“If a client anywhere in the world has a niche need or is ramping up in a certain global area, we don’t need to take out a lease, hire a country head, or get a team in place before we start. Our recruitment, onboarding and tech teams are already in place. We can ramp up automatically to support the needs of our clients wherever they are. That gives us a competitive advantage – and it gives our clients a competitive advantage to deliver quickly.
“In the customer sphere, trust is harder to gain and easier to lose. You need to be really responsive to what customers are saying. By having global teams listening and reacting, and sending data back to our clients, we can be first responders in terms of market intelligence.”
The genius of this approach is that it makes Otonomee and its people a core part of their customers’ business journey.
“Very much so,” Aidan agrees. “Every business is different, every brand is different. We have to immerse ourselves in their brand and culture. Each service we build for a customer is customised – okay, there are similar building blocks, but you have to customise based on how they do things.
“The service we deliver is the outcome. But what’s put in place beforehand is the real challenge – and that’s our area of expertise. We put in place large, global, complex operations and work with our clients to build that functionality. What you and I see as customers is the end service. Behind it there’s huge complexity in operations, tech, workforce management, and data analytics.”
Aidan and Hilary were finalists in the EY Entrepreneur of the Year emerging business category last year. What makes them different from most of today’s entrepreneurs is they were already seasoned professionals.
“Every entrepreneur knows: when you get an idea into your head that keeps burning, you can’t do anything but see it through,” Hilary adds. “We had that passion for the idea, even if it was probably mad – we were older entrepreneurs, we’d left safe and established careers that the banks liked, and we started a fully remote business together while working from home together. It was exciting and challenging.
“We had some tough years as every business does when scaling quickly. But ultimately we had the resolve that the model was needed and that we were solving real problems. We know now that we are solving them – we hear it from our team members and our customers. Market instability is probably an advantage for a company like Otonomee that can move and pivot quickly in response to client needs. We’re still here, we’re still married, and the business is scaling.”
-
Bank of Ireland is welcoming new customers every day – funding investments, working capital and expansions across multiple sectors. To learn more, click here
-
For support in challenging times, click here
-
Listen to the ThinkBusiness Podcast for business insights and inspiration. All episodes are here. You can also listen to the Podcast on:
-
Spotify
-
SoundCloud
-
Apple
