Skibbereen To Silicon Valley
Once famous for the eponymous song lamenting the Great Famine and emigration, in 2019 Skibbereen became Ireland’s first gigabit town, thanks to SIRO fibre broadband. One local business in particular has benefited from Skibbereen’s new place in the world. Software company Spearline is the poster-child for the Cork town’s renewal, employing over 200 people worldwide, with subsidiaries in Romania and India.
It has been whirlwind recent few years for Spearline and its founders Kevin Buckley (43) and Matthew Lawlor (43), with a number of buyand-build acquisitions culminating in March 2023 when Silicon Valley firm Cyara acquired Spearline itself for an undisclosed sum.
Spearline tests and monitors business telecommunications services over fixed line and mobile infrastructure, helping clients to identify and resolve issues with their communications channels. Clients include Amazon Connect, Genesys, MasterCard and Zoom.
Buckley and Lawlor founded the business in 2003, originally as an open-source software company and operating from Buckley’s father’s farmyard, before moving to an office above the local credit union in the town. In 2013, the business was renamed Spearline Labs and began providing automated number testing for the telecoms industry. By 2019, the company was employing over 100 people, had moved to a new head office in the town and opened a support team in India.
A number of buys helped the company to achieve lift-off. In 2021, Spearline acquired Israeli company TestRTC for $7.5m. The deal added to the product suite WebRTC, which enables apps and websites to capture and stream audio and video.
In November 2022, four months ahead of the Cyara deal being finalised, Spearline acquired Callstats from California company 8x8. The deal enabled Spearline to integrate analytics diagnostic and optimisation technology for WebRTC into its current products. Its core product, Voice Assure, helps clients connect with their customers.
The deals added new customers and proprietary technology, and also some scale. Turnover of €13.2m and net profit of €3.5m in 2021 were up 31% and 14% respectively on the prior year, raising net worth at Haven Sunrise Holdings, the company acquired by Cyara, to €9.4m. Growth enabled dividends of €1m to be paid to shareholders in 2020 and 2021.
Buckley and Lawlor each owned 32.2% of Haven, with directors Julie Buckley and Elizabeth Lawlor Colineau each owning 5.2%. Three other Buckleys owned 9.2% of the shares, while other shareholders were Brendan McLoughlin (7.1%), David Limrick (3.1%), Colman McCaffrey (3.1%) and Liam Corkery (2.8%).
As part of Cyara, Buckley is senior vice president in product and development, with Lawlor becoming VP of engineering. On completion of the deal with Cyara, Buckley acknowledged the “considerable support” the company had received over the years from Enterprise Ireland. In building a successful software company in a town in rural Ireland, the Spearline founders demonstrated that you don’t need to be based in Dublin or Cork to thrive in the international arena.
In 2019, before hybrid and flexible working became popular, Spearline introduced increased paid maternity, paternity and adoptive leave, in part to help attract and retain talent to the remote location. With the rewards from the Cyara transaction, Buckley and Lawlor will surely have the right work life balance in place.