We may be living in the age of artificial intelligence (AI), but we should never forget that the key to success will always come down to people. That was the advice given by serial entrepreneur Kevin Neary to this year’s cohort of Innovators to Watch.
Speaking at a breakfast event on Thursday attended by those featured in The Irish Times this year, Mr Neary stressed the importance of human interaction in all business dealings. “Even when you seem to be competing with corporate giants, the route to success for any new business is a strong relationship and understanding of the customers,” he said.
Mr Neary, who founded GamesWorld and was later managing director of GameStop, now mentors several start-ups and also holds non-executive boardroom roles in various companies.
At the morning event, he detailed his own route to success. Part-time work in a Dublin bookshop – Chapters, which he now co-owns – became an unlikely starting ground for a young Dublin man with “no experience, no capital, nothing but an idea and a bundle of energy”. Along with his business partner, and borrowing from Chapters second-hand books model, they spotted a chance to disrupt the 1990s computer games market.
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Offering gamers the chance to trade in their old games opened a new market for used games, affordable to cash-strapped gamers.
With no marketing budget, the company’s only asset was its people. The business was built not on ads, but on creating a “community” where customers became “ambassadors”.
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This model of selling used games alongside new ones was more than a sales tactic; it was a brilliantly simple, self-perpetuating loyalty engine.
It created a system where customers constantly returned to trade and buy, building a recurring relationship and a loyal community from day one. “We spotted that the key was not our sales figures, but our trade-in figures. How many games we got back was as important as our sales,” he explained.
As the business grew to five stores and encountered multiple challenges, it repeatedly came back to relationships with people. That involved ensuring that all staff clearly knew the vision for the business, the key measurements and the message they needed to deliver to every customer.
“You cannot be there for every decision, so you must trust your team and provide them with the ‘guide rails’ – the vision and values – to make the right decisions on your behalf,” he said.
Sitting on various boards these days, Mr Neary says AI is recognised as a “huge game changer” and that every board meeting has it on the agenda. Yet he says that ultimately it’s a support tool.
Organisations are generating a “quite frightening” amount of data and information, so the real challenge is to manage it effectively.
But you are always dependent on the quality of the inputs, he said. When asked what people are forgetting in the focus on AI, Mr Neary said “people”. He said that “people do business and drive organisations” and urged start-up founders to never forget the basics: “manage people, incentivise people and engage people”.
He said AI may be a powerful, complex compass for your business, but the ancient truth remains that in business, you still have to walk up to people and shake their hand.
