Businessman Colm Lyon talks to Nick Webb on The Capital B about Realex Payments, the company he conceived in a pub in Dublin and later sold for €115m.
Have you ever had an idea that you know will make you money, it’s just a case of knowing where to start?
Colm Lyon was working for Ulster Bank when, at the age of 38, his urge to start up his own business became too strong and he came up with the idea for Realex Payments.
All it took was a pint in a Dublin, a friend of his and three beermats to get the ball rolling.
“I always had this feeling that I’d love to be my own boss,” he tells Nick Webb on the latest episode of The Capital B, Maximum Media’s new business podcast.
“I just wanted to be the guy at the front of the ship, the guy who’d be leading an organisation, who would decide which direction this idea would take.
“I saw the internet emerging and things happening that you never could have done before. The idea of trying to get a business where you can make money while you sleep, where something could be working for you 24/7, and while it’s working you’re earning income (even when you’re not paying attention).”
Lyon always dreamed of owning a business where the value created was not linked to the number of hours he put into it. He wanted a product that people would use and, as that product reached wider and wider circulation, would make him income.
Lyon, from Clontarf in Dublin, explained how he got the idea to start up Realex Payments.
“The retailers wanted to sell online; the banks wanted to process the payments from the businesses that were selling online, but they didn’t want to connect to every retailer. The idea was to have someone sitting in the middle – JP Morgan call it ‘the knot in the bow-tie’ – through which businesses can process their transactions.”
Colm explains the ‘Eureka!’ moment that he experienced when he was having a pint in Kennedy’s on Westland Row in Dublin.
“I remember sitting down with a buddy of mine in the pub one night,” he says.
“There were three beermats – I told him the beermat on the right was the retailers who were selling online. The beermat on the left, they’re the bank that needs to process those transactions and authorise them on the behalf of those retailers, and we’re going to be the beermat in the middle.”
In the latest episode of The Capital B with host Nick Webb below, Colm Lyon explains how he managed to turn his idea into reality and turn it around to a business he would later sell for more than €100m.
Main image: Silicon Republic
