Tracing family ancestries is one area where money seemingly does grow on trees, though sustaining a business in this area requires the ability to weather economic droughts. Eneclann, a historical and genealogy services company that began in 1998 as an offshoot from Trinity College Dublin research, found purchase and liquidity thanks in large part to the faith of investors.

Eneclann was established by a husband-and-wife team, Brian Donovan and Fiona Fitzsimons [pictured], who jumped into the deep end of business management from careers in academia. The company had racked up losses of €350,000 by 2006 but despite this managed to entice bevies of investors to put equity into the firm through the Business Expansion Scheme and Employment Investment Incentive.

The recession took its toll on the family-tree business shook, so that by 2013 Eneclann had accumulated losses of €335,000 and just €29,000 in cash reserves. However, fortunes changed for Eneclann in 2014 when it sold its 40% shareholding in Findmypast, a joint venture with D.C. Thomson, to the Dundee publisher.

Transformed

That deal transformed Eneclann’s balance sheet. In the year to July 2014, the company booked a net profit of €1.2m. Net worth at year-end was €2.2m compared with €670,000 a year earlier. The company ended financial 2013/14 with balance sheet cash of €1.8m, a nice comfort factor for BES/EII investors who had injected €1.3m into the company over the years.

In Association with

Donovan and his wife were both studying for doctorates in history from TCD when the idea for Eneclann emerged. “What interested us was not going down the traditional route, becoming professors somewhere, but taking the expertise we had and doing something creative in the innovation space,” Donovan recalls

The couple established a campus company in TCD, which Donovan says was the first such business to be created by a humanities-based venture anywhere in Ireland. “We were trying to bring the evidence of history to the public and to engage them in a more active way,” he adds.

Eneclann provided expert research for customers who wanted to delve into the history of their families or of specific buildings. “We also started bringing in related skills such as archiving and provided those services to the state sector – libraries, museums etc. We also provided services to digitalise historic records, mostly to state bodies,” says Donovan.

Sweat Equity

The founders funded Eneclann themselves at the outset – “sweat equity of the highest order,” according to the founder. Enterprise Ireland also provided employment support grants and capital investment of some €90,000. However, it was BES investors who provided the bulk of Eneclann’s initial funding.

“We discovered the power of the BES initiative early, running the first of these schemes in 2001 and raising about €150,000,” says Donovan. A second BES round in 2002 brought in considerably less but the founders stuck with the scheme, returning to it and its later EII guise regularly in the subsequent years. The company’s largest EII haul was in December 2013, when €557,000 was raised from EII investors.

“The BES/EII scheme has been very effective, particularly during the crash because the banks closed shop,” Donovan explains. “The EII scheme is often ignored by startups or not really appreciated. It’s a damn sight cheaper than a bank loan and you’ve got people who are taking a risk with you. You just need to put forward a coherent and intelligent proposal.

“EII investors need assurance on a number of issues. They need to know that their money is secure for the term and that it’s going to come back to them. As long as you give them a sense of confidence that this is going to take place, and you look after their interests, you’re not going to have any problems.”

Celebrity Stories

Piquing general interest in what is essentially a niche business was still a challenge, Donovan concedes. “We were able to trade on our association with TCD in the early days but that was superseded by the types of stories we could bring to media publications. We were doing high-profile genealogies for well-known people; in recent years we’re probably best known for doing Barack Obama and Tom Cruise’s genealogy. It’s not just that we did famous people – the stories that came out of them were exciting.

“That got us a good deal of coverage in the press, particularly in down times. We were able to get quite a lot of publicity without spending an awful lot of money. That’s an important lesson to be learned by startups – you need to sell a story to the media, rather than hoping that they’ll pick it up and determine it.”

Eneclann could rely on state clients for its archiving and research services for several years after launching but that channel has since dried to a trickle. Donovan says that the main source of business now is international audiences interested in heritage and drawn mainly from Anglosphere countries.

Partnerships

“Demand is still high but it keeps morphing. It’s driven by a desire to explain to grandchildren why their lives are the way they are. Your history is also unique to yourself, which is a big draw in an age where we are becoming increasingly homogenous,” Donovan maintains.

Making historical research commercially viable is still a challenge for Eneclann, notwithstanding the odd celebrity client. “One of the things that helped us punch above our weight was working in partnership with other organisations,” says Donovan. “The most successful to date was the joint venture we set up in 2010 with D.C. Thomson to establish a new online service for Irish family history. We were able to bring that venture to a resolution last year that was satisfying for all concerned.”

Based in offices on Aungier Street in Dublin, and employing around 20 people, Eneclann forsook its TCD lodgings a couple of years ago. “We were based in Trinity’s enterprise centre on Pearse Street for several years but it proved to be unsustainable,” says Donovan. “For what it was, the rent was too high. During the worst of the recession we couldn’t convince the college to change the lease terms so tenants ended up leaving.”

Future Plans

Donovan and his team plan to launch a new web service before the end 2015 that will make it easier for individuals to collaborate with others and build their genealogies on a piece-by-piece basis, rather than resort to lengthy consultations with professional researchers.

The company is also participating in Epic Ireland, an emigration-themed museum and centre planned for the CHQ building in Dublin by former Coca-Cola chief executive Neville Isdell, who owns the CHQ building. Donovan is part of the project’s advisory group and says that Eneclann will have a drop-in centre in the building for amateur genealogists when it opens in May 2016.

The economic upturn is translating into better business for Eneclann too, according to Donovan. “People have disposable income again, especially in Dublin. Irish people availing of our services disappeared for a while in the last few years, because what we offer is essentially a luxury product.”