EY CEO Outlook: The inside story of Ireland’s biggest ever software deal, with Barry Napier, Cubic Telecom

It was a complaint about the quality of a mobile phone that ultimately set Barry Napier on the path to becoming one of Ireland’s most successful technology entrepreneurs. The owner of the company to which Barry complained liked him, and offered him a job, and so began a lucrative career within the technology industry. But it was in 2011, when Barry discovered Cubic Telecom,  that everything changed, and after a twelve-year, rollercoaster journey at the helm of the company, Barry has just sold a majority stake in the business to Softbank, valuing it at over $1 billion. 

Cubic Telecom connects cars, tractors, motorbikes and trucks to online services, using 90 mobile network operator deals in over 190 countries around the world – “we can touch a car in Brazil from Dublin and we can fix problems.” The company connects over 480,000 cars every month and its technology is currently in around 10% of all cars globally. Yet Barry has ambitions to grow that to 40% on the back of Softbank’s investment. 

In this episode of The EY Podcast: CEO Outlook series, Barry Napier of Cubic Telecom shares the incredible story of how a small Irish company became a major player in a global ecosystem, securing a majority-stake investment from the world’s largest tech-focused investment fund. In conversation with Richard Curran, Napier reveals the personal sacrifices he made while building the company, what he has learned along the way, and what comes next... “it's only 51%. So there's still a bit of the story to go. So keep an eye out. I think it'll be a bit of fun.”

They also discuss:

·       Barry’s colourful career before Cubic, including the story of buying the Irish operations of an international company, BrightPoint, building its turnover to €155m, and then selling the assets to DCC.

·       Meeting Elon Musk and partnering up with Tesla.

·       The “really hard” process of going out to raise significant investment for Cubic Telecom and what he learned from the experience. 

·       How Covid caused revenues to collapse by 80% overnight – but also how the company avoided making any staff redundant and also creating an innovative new revenue model. 

·       The first thing he bought himself just after earning a reported 100m.

·       Convincing Qualcomm, the biggest chip manufacturer in the world, to invest in Cubic in 2011.

·       How early investors made 32 times their initial investment, more than they would have earned by investing in Apple.