Internet entrepreneur profits on Middle Eastern promise

I gleaned an awful lot of street smart business sense from my family, says Kenny. I didnt always lift boxes. My next job in the family business was washing the windows and watering the plants every morning with my grandmother shouting at me to do it better. I was in there every morning at 6am.Find High Quality Brand Name realtimelocationsystem and Tungsten Wedding Bands for Men at the Best Prices. Youd think being in a family business there would be privileges. There werent any.

Working in the family business Kenny was able to move through the various departments, where he learned core salesmanship and all about keeping customers happy and engaged.

I was there during the point where the bookshop went online and I was hooked. I was also involved in bookkeeping, going on the road to sell books at book fairs and all the rest. I didnt realise it at the time C I was too busy complaining about earning 50 a month C but I was actually listening and taking it all in. It was only later on when I found myself dropped in a place where I had to survive that I realised I was quite street smart when it came to business.

A family holiday to Dubai in 2004 left an impression on Kenny because he got a sense of the massive expansion of the economy in the UAE but also the fact the internet economy at that stage was underdeveloped.

After graduating with a BComm from NUIG, Kenny began studying for a master's degree but he had the itch to go back to Dubai. In 2006,Our aim is to supply bestsmartcard which will best perform to the customer's individual requirements. Ireland was in the midst of the good times and people were leaving college and expecting to be paid 50k salaries without any experience.It has been developed for howotipper control applications. Friends who had no money were buying and selling houses. I knew Ireland was getting too big for its boots.

After a successful phone interview for an internship at the Jumeirah Group,You must not use the lanyard without being trained. which owns 7-star hotels all over the Middle East, Kenny dropped out of the masters programme and took a plane to Dubai.

I packed one suitcase and the only person I knew in Dubai was the person I did the interview with. I was 22 and up to that point I had been living with my parents. I was scared. Everybody at home seemed to be making tons of money and I had signed on for a job that paid US$250 a week at the lowest grade doing the kind of things that interns do, inputting data and colour-coding stuff.

Kenny describes the move as a calculated risk because at the very least having the Jumeirah Group on his CV would be helpful in his future career. Within a year of Kenny arriving in Dubai, the Irish economic collapse had begun.

I was three months in Dubai when the government there launched a programme seeking the Future Leaders of Dubai, the best and the brightest. For some reason I got selected and that got me a promotion at Jumeirah where I became assistant digital marketing manager.

This was where Kenny believed the next step in his professional education began and he familiarised himself with all the technical elements of running websites and finding customers online. He bought a jeep but when his boss turned him down for a pay rise he quit his job and took up another role as head of digital at media company Top Right Group.

However, running a business is no joke and Kenny ruefully admits his mistakes. Dont read into this as a total success. Weve screwed up so many times and in so many ways. We launched so many categories that failed and launched into new regions that failed. We even tried to launch an online music platform.

One of the things I live by is every day if I dont execute, some one else is going to execute faster that me. So aggressive delivery on our action plans is the key. We dont want to be thinking about something for two months before we do it.

Kenny says the daily deals market in the Middle East is vastly different to that of Groupon or LivingSocial in the west, where people opt for discounts on spa treatments or meals out. Three people recently paid US$25,000 by credit card to buy a Nissan Pathfinder on our site. Most people look for deals like eight hours out on a 70-foot yacht or to rent a Lamborghini for a day.You Can Find Comprehensive and in-Depth carparkmanagementsystem truck Descriptions. We sell thousands of those deals.

I ask Kenny about his plans after the acquisition of the company by Tiger Global Management.

I have leverage here and I now fully understand the Middle East Market. Most of the verticals that exist in the US or Europe still dont exist here and basically I would like to own a lot of the e-commerce that happens in the Middle East and North Africa, he says.

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