EY Entrepreneur of the year: from aviation finance software to changing private dermatology

We’re proud to share that our founders, Aidan and Hilary O'Shea, have been profiled in The Irish Times as part of the prestigious EY Entrepreneur Of The Year 2025 programme.

The article highlights their entrepreneurial journey...From the early stages of launching Otonomee in 2020, to scaling a purpose-built, remote-first customer outsourcing company that puts people and purpose at its core. It’s a story of bold thinking, shared values, and a commitment to doing things differently. This recognition reflects the collective impact of the entire Otonomee team - a group of passionate, talented people who bring our vision to life every day, from wherever they are in the world.

What vision/light bulb moment prompted you to start up in business?

When Covid struck in March 2020 and the entire world went home to work. It was proven that working from home could be effective, secure and productive.

We imagined that the traditional call-centre business could be disrupted by building a business where people worked entirely from home and not in big, cramped call centres in the middle of overcrowded cities.

Describe your business model and what makes your business unique.

Our business is unique in that we are entirely remote first. We have no offices and everyone works from home. The business is purpose built as remote first and everything we do, every process and practice, has been designed for remote working.

This operating model allows us greater responsiveness, agility and flexibility in designing and building customer experience solutions.

What is your greatest business achievement to date?

Starting Otonomee during a time when the world was unsure how it would emerge from Covid. Surviving and growing the business to €20 million in turnover in five years.

What was your back-to-the-wall moment and how did you overcome it?

It’s often hard to believe how close the line is between failure and success and how many Irish entrepreneurs experience this.

At one point, we effectively ran out of cash. The business was growing rapidly, and we had a strong pipeline, but we had heavily invested in our team and technology and so the business was consuming cash.

Banks and state agencies couldn’t understand that scale requires aggressive and brave moves and so declined to help. We raised €500,000 from friends and family who believed in us and in the business, and that got us through a period, until we made it to profitability and self-sufficiency.

What moment/deal would you cite as the game changer or turning point for the company?

Winning a deal with a fast-scaling US health tech Oura. It gave us scale and a reference customer in the US. It helped us demonstrate that we could deliver a complex, large, global solution for one of the fastest-growing tech companies in the world.

What were the best and the worst pieces of advice you received when starting out?

The worst advice was not to work together as husband and wife. Working together as husband and wife is one of the business’s strengths. Having co-founders who are 100 per cent aligned, open, honest and complementary in our skills and background has been a major factor in our success.

To what extent does your business trade internationally and what are your future plans/ambitions?

About 90 per cent of our business is from exports (internationally traded services). We see the US as our main growth area, and we plan to leverage our existing US customers and reference brands to win more customers.

Describe your growth funding path.

The business is growing fast and is profitable. We can fund our future growth organically. We would be open to taking on funding from a partner where they brought in strategic support or capabilities that would enable us to grow the business significantly in the coming years.

How will your market look in three years and where would you like your business to be?

We have a plan to be at €50 million in turnover by the end of 2028. We are aiming for 15 per cent in EBITDA.

What are your annual revenues and profits?

We have confirmed orders for €20 million in revenue in this financial year and are on track to generate €2.2 million in EBITDA.

What impact have Donald Trump’s tariffs had on your business? How has this affected your view of the United States as a place in which to invest?

So far, no impact. But if there is an escalation and retaliatory tariffs we may be impacted. No business can assume they will be exempt. Our main US customers have European entities, which we had contracted with from the outset, so this was positive for us.

We have also established a presence in the US and are in the process of setting up an entity there which will give us some protection if we need to operate onshore in the US.

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