With a year left in the Dublin Institute of Technology before graduating from a physics and computer mathematics course, Cillian Kieran dropped out.
The decision left his mother devastated, but he was passionate about the software services he had been offering clients since his first coding job at 14, and wanted to start his own development business.
Whitenoise Media failed after less than two years, but the same entrepreneurial impulse which drove him to quit college and set up the company still motivates him today as co-founder and chief executive of internationally-acclaimed digital advertising agency CKSK.
As a teenager in the late 1990s, Kieran built a reputation as one of the top 200 Flash developers in the world.
After Whitenoise folded, an opportunity arose to work on a large architectural mapping system called Space Plan for a firm in Boston, which ended up being used to plan the Beijing Olympics.
“Even though I was only a kid I was invited to speak at a lot of technology events about Flash, and out of that came opportunities to contract as a digital consultant for other companies,” he recalls.
“[The work] varied from a week to a few months... It was an exciting time.”
His lack of a degree came back to bite him, however, and he had to leave the US in 2004 after failing to get a work permit to stay. On returning to Dublin he took up a technologist position with a digital signage start-up. After two years, he and the company's creative director Simon Keane decided to strike out on their own with an idea for a creative agency dedicated to digital.
“It was pretty much the opposite to what everyone else in Ireland was doing at the time,” he says, stressing how other advertising agencies across Europe were offering full-service to clients rather than concentrating on digital, which was becoming big business in the US.
"I remember meeting Enterprise Ireland and the County Enterprise Board and being asked who we were competing against. We always listed three or four agencies but none were Irish. We had a vision for an agency that would grow beyond Irish borders."
Even when CKSK was in its infancy the company pitched against large international agencies. The strategy was a success and after a year and a half they won their biggest contract yet with Three Mobile.
“It was a big deal. We were a tiny team of eight people serving one of the biggest mobile providers in the country. We did some great work with their marketing director, which won some awards for them. We pitched for Heineken then and things rolled on from there.”
Between 2006 and 2012, CKSK grew incredibly fast, doubling its staff and revenue every year to become one of the two largest digital advertising agencies in Ireland, alongside Cybercom.
Offices abroad
"We didn't aim to be the biggest [in the world], but one of the best, and we knew if we were going to do that we would have to open offices abroad."
Their first foray beyond Irish borders was the opening of an office in Amsterdam three years ago. CKSK was soon appointed as global agency for Sol, a beer brand owned by Heineken.
“This gave us a real opportunity to spread our wings and show people what we could do at an international level.”
North America beckoned, and the company opened an office in New York last year.
“Despite its distance from Europe, [it is] the market we needed to be in as a digital agency as it is one of the most competitive in the world. It is several years ahead of Europe in terms of its uptake of technology.”
Kieran is now based full-time in New York, while Simon runs the Dublin and Amsterdam offices.
The company employs around 75 people, and has a client list which includes Coors Light, Heineken USA, Pernod Ricard, Sony PlayStation and Pepsi Co.
Kieran has still managed to find the time to set up another tech business in New York called Folio, an online marketplace for designers to buy and sell creative assets for the production of digital projects, like stock photography, icons, imagery and tools.
He says that although San Francisco is the best place for a tech start-up to access venture capital, New York is the city he would recommend to other budding tech entrepreneurs.
Raise money
"It is harder to raise money but there is an incredible tech ecosystem which has developed over the past few years.
“It is much closer to Ireland too, which makes travelling back and forth, as well as negotiating time zones, easier,” says Kieran.
“The start-up scene, like the city itself, is just so full of energy. I wake up completely invigorated every day.
“It is the kind of place where you just want to do things you care about.
“We have aspirations to expand into other markets, which we are planning at the moment, but for the foreseeable future, New York is home,” says Kieran.
