Lured to post-apartheid South Africa by the promise of opportunity

WILDGEESE: EMIGRANT BUSINESS LEADERS ON OPPORTUNITIES ABROAD:Paul O'Riordan, Chief Executive Officer, Synexa Life Sciences

THE LURE of a brave new world in post-apartheid South Africa proved to be too difficult an opportunity to resist for Paul O’Riordan, who moved to Johannesburg in 1995.

Following the African National Congress’s landslide election victory in the country’s first democratic elections in 1994, the Dublin-born Harvard Business School graduate moved to the City of Gold to help set up an office of international business consultants McKinsey Co.

“I had a really exciting time in Johannesburg in the mid-to-late 1990s. During that period it seemed anything was possible. The country, led by Nelson Mandela, was confounding the critics who said it would implode, and was really making its way in the world.

“There was a genuine need for South Africa to be brought up to speed on what’s happening in the international business world because of the isolation that sanctions had subjected the old regime to. It felt like we were helping to make a real difference here, and that was hugely satisfying,” he remembers.

However, by 2003 he felt his role as a business consultant in South Africa’s financial capital was getting predictable, so he decided to look elsewhere for new opportunities.

Since then the 44-year-old, who is married to a South African and has three children, has established a biotechnology company called Synexa Life Sciences in Cape Town, where he holds the position of chief executive officer.

Located on Stellenbosch University’s Cape Town campus, the company’s core business is its biomarker research laboratory, which helps international biotech drug development companies to understand the safety and efficacy of new drugs in development.

A biomarker is a molecular signal that a person’s body emits in reaction to a particular drug or disease. “For example, many tumours have associated biomarkers and by examining a blood sample, we can establish whether the particular tumour is present, often before it can be seen. This can be extremely useful as a diagnostic tool because a tumour usually can’t be seen for the first 20 cell divisions and, by the time 40 cell divisions have occurred, the patient will be in serious trouble.

“In addition, this technology is very useful for testing new drugs, and global biopharma companies contract us to do this research for them; by measuring biomarkers in clinical trial subjects we can determine how patients are responding to a new drug.”

O’Riordan says the company employees about 40 scientists, who are predominately South Africans, and he envisages his enterprise growing over the coming years.

Such is the level of company growth they are currently experiencing that the company is expanding into a purpose-built laboratory facility nearby and considering building satellite labs in the US and Europe.

For those thinking about Cape Town as a potential destination to move to, he is adamant that a key attribute any new arrivals will need if they are to make a living is an entrepreneurial spirit.

“One of the things about Cape Town is there are not that many jobs because large companies are few and far between. However, it is a good place to be an entrepreneur because the cost of building a company is low.

“Most of the expatriate community here are entrepreneurs who have created their own situation.

“One of the reasons I created my business here was because I wanted to stay here. In today’s globalised world, I think it is feasible to build an internationally competitive business almost anywhere . . . I started out with a couple of scientists I know and we really did not have a clear idea about what we were going to do, as the ground is always changing in biotechnology.

“But we were confident in a few areas and managed to raise the venture capital locally, so we said let’s give it a go,” he says.

O’Riordan says that although Capetonians are renowned for their laid-back attitude, which might be a cause for concern among entrepreneurs thinking of employing people, he has not seen that affect the work ethic in his company in an adverse way.

“It certainly isn’t the case in the science community, but then we get to employ top class people,” he said.

Aside from the biotechnology sector, O’Riordan adds that he believes other opportunities for entrepreneurs also exist in the IT field, as well as project management and consultancy for those with a lot of experience.