This time last year Wendy Hamilton had put a move to the US, to take up the position of group chief executive at Irish security tech firm Netwatch, on what she assumed would be a brief pause.
aving accepted the new high-powered corporate role in late 2019, she spent much of early 2020 flying to and from America as she waited for all the paperwork to be completed. That all screeched to a halt when Covid grounded flights all over the world.
And while Hamilton was initially focused on keeping operations up and running in a pandemic, her attention soon came back to the needs of Netwatch in the US, where the group’s biggest hopes for expansion lie.
“I couldn’t be there on a day-to-day basis, so I had to look that in the eye and think about what that meant for us as a business, and also what it meant for me.
“In the context of the Netwatch group, the US is our single biggest area of growth,” she says.
“We wanted to not just strengthen the management team in the US, but also to bring the Netwatch way to America.”
The idea was that Hamilton would move there for a few years to lead the expansion, before hiring a US-based successor and then return to Ireland.
Her concern was that Covid and any delay in her moving could hold up the US expansion plans – and could also mean her having to commit to more years Stateside.
“It would mean me starting my US-based journey almost two years later than had been envisaged – and extending it out similarly at the other end. And from my perspective, that wasn’t as attractive a prospect for the family as it had been.”
Hamilton said the decision was soon made. Rather than slowing down the Netwatch expansion in the US, the company would accelerate its plans to hire locally.
“I said: ‘I think we need to leapfrog this phase and go straight now into hiring a US-based CEO.’
"As part of our three- to five-year strategy, the US will be the big component of the Netwatch group. So it was clear that we would need a US-based CEO – and I thought we should identify that person as quickly as possible. Thankfully we were able to.”
The end result was Kurt Takahashi being hired as the group CEO – while Hamilton, as MD of Ireland and the UK, will focus on expansion closer to home and in Europe.
Netwatch, a tech-focused CCTV monitoring company, was founded by David Walsh and Niall Kelly in 2002 and merged with other companies in the sector in 2018 in a deal backed by private equity firm Riverside. It had planned to grow revenues to €100m by 2020, although Covid may have pushed that target out.
Hamilton took over from Walsh when he left the company in 2019.
With such a strong focus on the US, can Carlow remain the centre of the business?
“I don’t think it’s so much a question of the centre moving, though I think the centre is certainly spreading,” she says. “But Carlow will continue to have a key role.
"In 2018, when a number of firms – including the US companies – came together, the natural effect of that was that the centre spread a little.
"But what’s key is that the technology component, and much of the cultural approach, is still very much based and grounded in the Carlow organisation and the people that work there.
“Our R&D team is managed out of Carlow,” she says, by way of example.
Covid has changed the course of many people’s lives over the past year, and Hamilton is pragmatic about its effect on her – and on the firm.
“At a personal level, I would sometimes think to myself: ‘Wouldn’t it be great now to be on San Clemente Pier, walking along the beach...’ So yes, there are times when I certainly think it would be great to have that single-minded purpose.”
But at the same time, she says that in many areas of business and life there has been a big “reset” following Covid.
“I’d say that I’ve had a fairly soft landing, and I don’t really ruminate much, so I’m very lucky like that. There was a clear path to a decision.”
Despite the pandemic, Hamilton says it was a good year for the company.
“Thankfully we protected all our bases. We’re very conscious of the fact that many of our customers have certainly struggled since Covid and have had to reformulate their businesses.”
Hamilton comes from a middle-class family in Dublin. The youngest of six, her siblings had varied careers – among them musician Robert Hamilton, who was the drummer with The Fat Lady Sings.
She was unsure what to do after school, but knew she was good at French and so opted for what was a new course at the time – the international marketing and languages programme at DCU.
During her studies, she met the head of German chemical giant BASF in Ireland, and he offered her an internship in BASF in Ludwigshafen.
Her mother passed away three years later which prompted her to return to Ireland.
“I came back from Germany with some technology skills that I might not have developed had I stayed in Ireland. And also language skills, because by then I had very good German and also decent French.
"So I had a sense of how languages worked, and that was key for the growing software internationalisation industry that was evolving in Ireland.”
Although a marketing graduate, she was drawn to other aspects of business and liked “the nuts and bolts” of things.
“I started to work for Lotus [which was later bought by IBM] who were at the time sort of competing for ground with Microsoft,” she says,
She spent close to 18 years there, and became interested in the Lean business model – which focuses on maximising value and minimising waste in processes. She went on to do a Lean Masters in Waterford IT, during which time she was introduced to Netwatch, joining as director of operations.
It was a massive culture shock.
She had come from large corporates, where there was a heavy focus on procedures and governance.
“You checked everything before you did things. You agreed things with other people before you did things. Then I found myself going into a single-storey building in Carlow. And I’m not sure I had ever been to Carlow.
"You know, what struck me first was my office. One wall was all shelves – and I thought: ‘What would anybody want with a whole wall full of shelves? What do you put on shelves these days?’
She was used to a completely digital world. “We had been involved in the localisation and the internationalisation of Microsoft – everything we did was digital.”
Another difference at her new entrepreneurial employer was the need for interpersonal relations in a smaller Irish-owned company.
“A large number of our employees were from in and around Carlow, so they knew each other’s families. I’d never been in an environment like that before.
"I would always have been thinking about the project, like: ‘There’s an output here and all I need to do is talk to Mary about achieving that output with Andrew.’
“But when you’re working in an environment like Netwatch in Carlow, you find that Mary and Andrew maybe live two streets away from each other, and maybe their children go to the same schools. And I had to reset that ‘business is anonymous’ button.
“That was a real challenge for me, because in truth I’m probably a little bit more at home in that world. So that lack of anonymity was uncomfortable.
Hamilton grew to appreciate the benefits over time. “You saw how meaningful it was. You have to bring your genuine self through the door in Carlow. Don’t think you can bring anybody else in, because it will be spotted by the time you’d gone down for your first cup of tea."
She says she didn’t originally have the CEO role in her sights, but following the Riverside deal she was interested in “a broad role that really allowed me contribute, and allowed me do the things that I like – solving problems, moving internationally.”
Given the events of the past year and the recent appointment of Takahashi in the US, she has now refocused.
Hamilton’s key responsibilities include growing the business in Europe and the UK.
“Our UK strategy is at the moment under revolution, more so than evolution. We have a relatively small customer base in the UK, and we’re working with a number of organisations to drive a new UK strategy around a set of product offerings that will be a little more UK-related.”
The UK has proven to be quite a different market to Ireland, as is borne out in multiple police dramas where CCTV footage plays a central role in solving crimes.
The prevalence of public CCTV cameras means Netwatch needs to market the benefits of interactive private monitoring to stop the wrongdoings from happening in the first place.
“The UK was probably much earlier in their deployment of CCTV systems, whereas we came in with the interactive approach and the preventative approach.”
Meanwhile, the tech team in Carlow is busy developing a multi-lingual platform to underpin Netwatch’s European expansion
Although a lot has changed for Hamilton in the past year, she is ready to get her teeth into the job at hand.
“I don’t want a role that has a name. I never did really. I want a lived working experience that I deeply enjoy, and at the end of the week I want to be able to say ‘I did good’ or ‘I screwed up, better do better.’”
CURRICULUM VITAE
Name Wendy Hamilton
Position MD for Netwatch Ireland and UK, and Head of Global Monitoring
Age 57
Education DCU, degree in international marketing and languages; Masters in Lean Enterprise Excellence, Waterford IT; currently studying for the Institute of Directors’ chartered director programme
Family Married to Declan Surpless, daughters Martha and Hannah
Lives Bray, Co Wicklow
Favourite book There are two, ‘The Fountainhead’ by Ayn Rand and I also really, really loved ‘A Suitable Boy’ by Vikram Seth
Favourite series/boxset At the moment we love ‘Offspring’ and ‘Working Moms’
BUSINESS LESSONS
What advice would you have for someone interested in taking on a leadership role?
“Know yourself first. Build from yourself out. Because there is no sustainability in a leadership role if it isn't ground in who you are, you know. It will fry your head. So, know yourself and always build from yourself out.
“And know where your electric fences are – and don't f-ing touch them.”
