A classic mistake made by first-time founders is to assume that the eureka moment that inspired their start-up will be enough to carry their new business safely into the future. This is rarely the case.
In a successful business, innovation is seldom one big bang. It’s an incremental process that starts with a bright idea but continues in other ways to create a rounded business with the momentum needed for growth. Without it, start-ups fail, and approximately 50 per cent of new businesses go to the wall within the first five years.
When Dave Hogan, founder of water monitoring technology company Smart Flow, launched his business seven years ago, his aim was to stop leaks and save his customers about 30 per cent a year on their water usage.
He designed an “always on” monitoring system that combined ultrasonic flow sensors with smart monitoring to keep tabs on consumption, detect leaks, control the flow of water into premises in real time and turn off the supply completely in the event of an emergency.
The consistency and accuracy offered by SmartFlow’s system was a big step up from the mechanical meters and manual checks widely in use at the time, and the company’s solution filled an unmet need for residential, light commercial and hospitality customers alike.
Had Hogan been willing to coast, he could have built a healthy business serving the domestic market alone. But having spent two years and more than €500,000 developing the SmartFlow minimum viable product (MVP), Hogan had bigger plans.
Over the last seven years through a combination of product and technology innovation married to an alertness to market opportunity, the Balbriggan-based company has grown to a staff of 14 with an office in London and clients in Ireland, the UK, Europe and the US.
Today, roughly 60 per cent of its business is in the UK, and the company provides monitoring services for more than 3,000 devices. This figure is expected to double in the next 24 months.
“I think the biggest difference between now and 2019 is that back then we were trying to prove the system worked. Today, we are setting the standard for our industry and deploying cutting-edge technology to scale the business internationally,” Hogan says.
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“SmartFlow started as an app to remotely monitor water consumption and identify leaks. It has since developed into a water intelligence and risk management platform. As a consequence, we’ve had a change in focus driven by a shift in our customer base and the technical advances led by our engineering team, who are always looking for ways to do things better, faster, smarter,” Hogan says.
“When we started we were dealing with single or small numbers of multiple properties,” he adds. “Today, our primary market is large-scale property portfolios in retail, construction and commercial real estate.
“Our customers include Applegreen, Circle K, the HSE, Canary Wharf Group, Sisk and John Paul Construction. We are also working directly with insurers and insurance risk teams to help them reduce escape-of-water exposure. Water claims represent one of the biggest payouts for the insurance industry.”
Having spent 17 years as a plumber before starting SmartFlow, Hogan was familiar with the damage caused by water leaks. It was the failure to find a good monitoring solution for his customers that prompted him to design his own, a process that put him on a steep learning curve as he got to grips with sensor technology, the IoT and mobile app development.
“What drove me was that I’d been into thousands of premises over the years and seen the cost of excessive water usage and leaks,” he says. “We understood the problem from the inside, and as a result, we got a lot of people reaching out to us.
“When you’re designing your MVP and you offer it to a potential customer for testing, they will tell you pretty fast if it works. If you’ve any sense, you’ll listen. I have always believed in seeking criticism in order to improve.”
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SmartFlow’s launch was timely as the company began gaining market visibility just as access to reliable water data started moving up the corporate agenda. Finance teams needed accurate cost and consumption visibility, sustainability teams needed reliable data for reporting and reduction targets and construction companies needed to mitigate water waste.
“Organisations have to keep on top of their water issues now, and our technical capabilities have evolved alongside our commercial growth to enable them to do so,” Hogan says. “Most recently it’s been about introducing AI into our business with significant beneficial impact.
“AI is allowing us to scale our monitoring and operational capabilities much more efficiently, and because we have always been agile, we were able to integrate AI very quickly,” Hogan says.
Hogan has not been tempted to seek funding to accelerate SmartFlow’s growth. “We’ve had offers to be acquired and the option of looking for VC, but taking outside money changes the dynamic, and you can end up selling your soul for everything you’ve worked for. We’re happy to play the slower game and to grow organically,” says Hogan, who adds that it’s easy to be seduced by bigger markets but that the lure “of too many shiny things too soon” is best avoided.
“You have to weigh up the risk versus the reward and what it’s going to cost you,” he says. “We do some work in the US, for example, but we’re not rushing. This market will come in time.”
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The next big step for SmartFlow is to break ground on a site for its own purpose-built monitoring centre. The centre will be located in north Co Dublin, where humans will continue to provide the 24/7 oversight, and there will also be an engineering unit where apprentices can be trained.
“The monitoring centre is key to SmartFlow growing at scale, and both the new centre and AI will form a major part of the next chapter for the business,” Hogan says. “I also believe in giving back to my local community, and we are aiming to double employment over the next two years. With water scarcity becoming a serious issue across Ireland, the UK and Europe, the big story now is how businesses need to rethink the way in which they monitor and manage water.”