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55
Entrepreneur Paul Barry-Walsh won a Queen’s
Thus was born Safetynet. Through an ingenious series of
Award for helping the unemployed and
agreements with suppliers and leasing companies that meant
disadvantaged start their own businesses.
he didn’t have to put a single penny of his own into the business
(financing to the tune of £500,000 which was no mean amount in
To say he is unimpressed with official efforts
those days) the company got going and became a huge success.
to do the same hardly begins to tell the story. In 1996 he started another company, Netstore, which supplies
high-end IT services to industry. After leading an MBO of Safetynet in
Paul Barry-Walsh is not what you’d call a rags to riches success story. 2000, he was able, by 2004, to call it a day and retire from full-time
He comes from a solid middle-class background, had a good business, his aim of generating enough money for himself and his
education and in his early 20’s went straight into a great job at IBM.
family fulfilled.
And there he could have stayed, happily earning way above the
average pay, in his nice house in Chiswick, until he realised none of it
It was at this point that Paul Barry-Walsh discovered what to do with
was enough. Basically, and with compelling honesty, he says he just
the rest of his life.
wanted more money to lead a life unencumbered by worries about
things like school fees, so he set about it by starting his own business.
“I had changed my life by starting my own business,” he says. “I
wanted to help others do the same.”
“My first effort was a total failure!” he says. “Back in the 80’s, there
was a dearth of software engineers who could programme big UNIX
So he decided to set up a foundation that would channel money
systems. This was when projects like computerising the London
and mentoring towards people who were otherwise unlikely to find
Underground were going on. I went over to a computer show in
work again – long-term unemployed, disabled, offenders.
“I really had no idea how to do it,” he says. “I spent nine months
Dallas, recruited some of the best engineers and came back to the
researching what I could do and came across the micro-finance
UK expecting to make my fortune, only to find that I had been
model. I also set up a charity, which is not the easiest thing to
headed off at the pass and these engineers had been obliged by
achieve thanks to government regulation. The model that
the main software company running these projects to sign contracts
emerged was very much of our own, almost accidental design.
preventing them working for people like me! End of business.”
We just sort of bumbled into it.”
Not to be put off, Paul and a friend turned their attention to disaster
Essentially, Barry-Walsh’s charity, the Fredericks Foundation,
recovery as the next big idea. Remember, this was the 80’s, when
encourages people who have a desire to work for themselves,
businesses ran their systems on huge systems – laughingly called
and a skill they can exploit, to start their own business. The
mini-computers – and they were operated and understood by a
Foundation lends them small amounts of money, on average
tiny priesthood of engineers. Undoubtedly smart though they were,
about £2,500, to get them going then advises them through a
none of them had calculated what to do in the event of a team of mentors and, increasingly, staff advisers who understand
disastrous loss of data. the challenges a lot of their clients are facing.
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