Elkstone’s Barry Brennan (left) is backing the Cytidel trio
tempting job offer that was too good to refuse made the decision to wind up that business a bit easier.
After meeting Flannery on his last day, and Flannery’s first, at Accenture, they ended up working together again at Integrity360, gaining two years of experience working with banks at a stage when they were ahead of the curve on policing and security.
“Now it’s the case that everybody has to take account of cyber security, but I got to learn in places where it was already critical, and then bring that to organisations who are just starting to understand the role that it played.”
From running day-to-day security, helping designing systems and doing incident response, Conlon gained experience across a broad spectrum, as well as getting to know Flannery much better, down in the trenches. “When you go through security incidents with people and you’re responding to issues at two o’clock in the morning, you really build a bond with somebody; you know you can depend on them, you know they’ve got your back. When trying to pick a cofounder, Conor was an obvious choice.”
The pair founded their startup, Overwatchr Security Ltd, in September 2021. Taking on the role of CEO, Conlon says he has a new understanding of what his leadership clients need. His approach is to “bring calm to the chaos”. The founder adds: “I love talking to customers, because they are your source of new ideas. They are the ones who have the problems right now. I may have lived this problem four or five years ago, but times change so quickly.”
As is often the case with entrepreneurs, Conlon grew up in a family business, One Man and His Van, and helped out with the moving jobs part-time for over a decade. “If your family have been through it, they’ll offer advice and that’s a phenomenal resource to have,” he reflects.
Joining the NDRC accelerator programme was another useful support for the entrepreneur. “We were based out of Dogpatch Labs, where we had access to many really good people. Any time I had a problem that I thought was a crisis, they had seen it all before and knew what I needed to do. Having that resource is more valuable than the money.”
In his Cytidel role, Conlon expects a lot of travel in the future, exploring overseas markets and a new product launch. To that end, much of the investment funding will be spent on growing out the team. “Hiring is really difficult, especially when you’re such a small team. You’ve got to get the right people, and I think we’ve done a really good job with that,” he says.
Conlon operates on the premise of “convincing people that what you’re building is the future”. Looking forward, as new customers come in, Cytidel will be hoping to double that team with more engineers and developers, and boots on the ground in new markets.
“It’s exciting to see how far we’ve come in the last year. When you look at where we were when we first joined the NDRC versus where we are now, it’s chalk and cheese.”