When Limerick native Paul Quigley set up NewsWhip in Dublin with Andrew Mullaney, they first wanted to create the ‘BuzzFeed of Europe’. Since then, they’ve pivoted twice and now NewsWhip is a data science tool embraced by some of the world’s busiest journalists and newsrooms.
One question I always love to ask people who left high-flying careers to become entrepreneurs is what was the moment, what was the spark that urged them to enter the start-up fray?
For Paul Quigley, who had several years under his belt as a lawyer working for a prestigious New York law firm, it was his 30th birthday.
“I realised I wasn’t jealous of the lifestyle of the law firm partners. It was a career where every year you got more money and more status and it would be hard to step off. And that was the trajectory I would have been on if I just kept doing it.
“On the day I turned 30 I was working on a Saturday and I had billed 14 working hours and my friends turned up outside the skyscraper, I had a toast and went back in. I decided there was more to life.
“Plus the start-up life suits me, you can’t blame anybody else. It’s all on you.”
