EY Entrepreneur of the Year international finalist: Graham Stubbs, Diona

Graham Stubbs is the co-founder and chief executive of Diona, a company which provides enterprise mobility solutions and consulting services.

He graduated from Trinity College Dublin in 1993 with a masters degree in business studies. He worked for Oracle and EDS Group, and several technology start-up companies in Silicon Valley, before joining Cúram Software.

As vice president of sales for EMEA and emerging markets, he helped pioneer and grow new markets for Cúram around the world.

Following the acquisition of Cúram Software by IBM in 2012, Stubbs co-founded Diona along with Anil Singaraju and John Polakowski. The company is headquartered in Dublin, with offices in the US, UK, Canada, and India.

As chief executive, Stubbs leads a team of more than 120 employees worldwide in providing enterprise mobility solutions and consulting services to the global health and human services market.

Diona's mission is to change lives by creating technology solutions that transform how people's health and human services needs are served. It partners with companies such as Accenture, HP, IBM, and SAP to deliver solutions for customers.

What vision/lightbulb moment prompted you to start up in business? It may sound like a cliché, but Diona began in 2012 as a sketch on the back of a beer mat in a pub (Healy Mac's in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia). John Polakowski, Anil Singaraju, and I had worked together for years and recognised that mobile devices were a transformative technology that could radically improve how government agencies help people. We believed we had the best experience, knowledge, and connections to make that happen.

What was your "back-to-the-wall" moment and how did you overcome it? We launched Diona in the face of the world recession at a time when there was no working capital from Irish banks.

Each of the three founders had to put their own savings on the line and borrow from friends, too. We bootstrapped the business while going without a salary for the first year and at one point in early 2013, we had only €5,000 in the bank and a €30,000 payroll run looming. That was a tough one to explain to our families when our mortgage repayments were due! Being surrounded by brave people is often the difference between giving up and doing what is necessary to succeed.

What moment/deal would you cite as the "game changer" or turning point for the company? In early 2014 we received €4 million in venture capital funding. It provided us the ability to go out and build the leadership team we needed. Diona was able to recruit top talent including seasoned and well-connected leaders from major players in our industry such as Accenture and IBM.

This expanded leadership team complemented the founders’ abilities and elevated the company to a new level.

It also sent a clear signal to our customers, partners, and competitors that we were serious about being the global leader for mobility solutions in our market.

To what extent does your business trade internationally and what are your plans? From its founding, Diona has been international to its core. Anil, JP, and I live and work on three different continents, and our employees work on projects in more than a dozen countries around the world.

Serving markets across the globe is essential to our growth. North America, Europe, the Middle East, Australia, and New Zealand will be the prime focus regions for us for the next two years.