“We are aiming to grow revenue to €15 million and double our workforce to 150”

Larissa Feeney’s varied career set her on the path to business success as founder of award-winning online accountancy and business services firm Kinore, writes Barry McCall

It may come as a surprise, but the founder and CEO of the Irish Accountancy Awards Online Practice of the Year didn’t set out to be an accountant. Despite accounting being her best subject in school, Larissa Feeney initially wanted to pursue a career in hospitality.

“Looking back now, I don’t know if I got the right guidance at school or just didn’t listen to it,” says the Kinore founder and Chief Executive who has built Ireland’s first online, remote-first finance and business services company from revenue of €300,000 in 2017 to €4 million today.

“We have seen year-on-year revenue growth of more than 30 percent and we are aiming to grow revenue to €15 million by 2028. We also plan to double our workforce from 75 to 150 employees over the next 18 months,” Feeney says.

This remarkable success story began 25 years ago when the Ulster University hospitality graduate decided on a change in career direction. She had been working at a Donegal hotel for the summer following her graduation.

“It was almost like Fawlty Towers,” she recalls. “It only opened for the season, and they threw everything at it. We worked morning ‘til night for seven days a week.”

Then Feeney spotted an unusual job advert for a Director of First Impressions – receptionist – with Claremount Chartered Accountants in Derry. Not only was she intrigued by the advert, she was attracted by the idea of a nine-to-five job.

“The Managing Partner, Gary Heaney, was very much ahead of his time and open to new ideas. That was my first exposure to an accountancy practice. I got to see just how important accountancy is. I saw clients coming in worried about something and coming out feeling okay. The impression I got was that accountants solved their problems for them.”

Path to accountancy

Her experience at Claremount Chartered Accountants set Feeney on a new path. “I asked the Managing Partner if the practice would put me through the accountancy exams and he said yes.”

She qualified as a Chartered Accountant in November 2004 and stayed with the practice until the end of her contract in June 2005. “It was a fantastic journey. Gary Heaney didn’t have to say yes. If he had said no, things might be very different.”

Feeney’s decision to leave was prompted by a desire to further her career. “I went into industry. I have always been fascinated by business and I wanted to learn about its inner workings.”

She went to work for JML Transport in Donegal. “It was quite a significant business at the time. One of the directors, Bríd McLaughlin, was an unbelievable businesswoman. I gained great insights from her on the minute detail of how to run a business well. That was my first exposure to a woman in a senior position in business and it left an impression on me. She was well able to hold her own in a very tough, very male dominated business in an industry with tiny margins. I never would have got those insights had I stayed in practice.”

Fate played a hand at that point. While Feeney was on maternity leave with her second child, the company sold off a substantial chunk of its business. 

“While on leave, I had local people coming to me asking if I could do their books and VAT and so on. I asked if I could come back two or three days a week and keep on doing the other work. Bríd McLaughlin said yes. I reduced my time with JML over the years and the company eventually became a client. It happened quite organically, there was never a full stop when I jumped into self-employment.”

Concept for Kinore

The next significant point in Feeney’s journey came about as a result of another newspaper advert, this time from an accountancy practice in Derry looking for an accountant to take on work on a sub-contract basis. 

“The accountant had been ill for a year, and it was coming up to UK self-assessment time in January. He had 30 to 40 clients and was struggling to get their tax returns done on time. I drove over, picked up the files and did the work back at home. It worked very well. He then offered to sell me the book of clients and that was really the start of me building my own client book.”

Looking after all those clients from home planted a seed. “They didn’t care where it got done so long as it was on time and correct,” Feeney says. 

“That was what started the concept of Accountant Online (the former name of Kinore). The website went live in 2011. 

“Client numbers were very low at the time. I was doing everything myself, including blogging and web posts and so on. The first call I got was from a company in Cork that wanted me to do their accounts. It was during the recession, and I probably benefited from that. Companies were looking for cost-effective alternatives for everything at the time.”

Roll on five years to a discussion in Derry about Brexit. “One of the people there represented an investor who decided to put some money into the business to take a small stake in Accountant Online,” Feeney explains. 

“It wasn’t just about the money. The investor brought skills and advice as well. In 2017, I hired our Director of Sales and Marketing, Rose Kervick. Having her coming in at senior level helped to grow the business. 

“An accountant has a very narrow set of skills, and you need a broader set to grow a business. Rose really helped in that area. We invested in digital marketing, online client engagement and so on. It has been a super growth journey since. There have been huge learnings on the way and loads of things I did right and didn’t do right.”

Business expansion

It has been difficult to keep up with the growth of the business at times, Feeney says. “You have to make sure you have the right structures in place. We are accredited to ISO standards and always make sure the quality is correct in areas like cyber and data security. We are also investing in automation and digitalisation.”

For her, the key learning has been the importance of having the right people around you. “When you have the right team around you, you can achieve your goals. If you get that right, everything else is doable. The other one is the importance of our clients. We always put our clients at the centre of what we do. We work in partnership with them, we go on a journey with them. That’s our culture.”

Looking after the people in the business is also important. “Working remotely can be hard. You don’t have learning by osmosis and water cooler moments. We are intentionally remote, and we invest massively to do it really well. What you save on office space you need to invest in bringing your people together.”

Having grown a multi-million euro business while also being a busy mother to three children, Feeney has some advice for other businesswomen. 

“It is not possible to grow a business and raise a family without a massive amount of support. You can’t do it on your own. I have had great support in the business and at home. My husband has been a massive support. You need to delegate, delegate, delegate and have the best people around you in all areas.”

Looking ahead, she says the future is “growth, growth and growth.”

“I am very lucky to have a young, ambitious and driven senior team in the business. They want to grow the business and help the people in it to reach their full potential. We will grow organically in Ireland and will expand into export markets and through acquisitions.”