Tr3dent plans to go public on Toronto stock exchange

Tr3dent, the Galway-based tech company, is targeting $100 million in annual revenues within five years as part of a plan which involves an unusual element: a public listing on a Canadian stock market.

The Enterprise Ireland-backed business, set up in 2014, helps some of the world’s biggest corporations execute digital transformation strategies and communicate more easily with customers.

It has grown steadily over the last eight years and counts the likes of Salesforce, T-Mobile, Huawei and Smart Cities Council among its clients.

But Tr3dent, which is built around a team of 10 staff, is aiming for significant expansion in the coming years, with its new plan to go public coming after increased demand for its services from companies increasingly looking to a digital future.

“One of the things with Covid is it’s brought terms like ‘digital transformation’ and ‘ecosystems’ to the forefront,” Kevin McCaffrey, founder and chief executive of Tr3dent, told the Business Post.

“That’s the sweet spot for us, because our platform enables companies to develop digital strategies to make them more successful. The pandemic meant these big companies were unable to go on site with their clients, and they needed a way to be able to engage and collaborate more effectively. That was where we came in.”

In an age which is now being described as “digital everything”, McCaffrey said his company was aware of the need to establish a competitive edge over other companies in the same sector.

One of Tr3dent’s key selling points, he said, was that it was particularly adept at helping clients model their digital ecosystem, meaning the way in which a network of stakeholders can connect and interact online.

“Thirty per cent of all global business revenues will be driven by ecosystems by 2025,” McCaffrey said, citing research carried out by McKinsey consulting.

“That’s absolutely massive, and it means that understanding the relationship between stakeholders is massively important. One of our key threads is the concept of our clients being able to co-create a solution in an ecosystem with their partners.”

Despite its successes, however, Tr3dent has had to get creative to compete with bigger players, particularly when it comes to holding on to its staff. In June, the company implemented a four-day working week – a move which has proved particularly successful, McCaffrey said.

“We’ve found that the level of productivity among our staff has actually probably increased compared to a five-day week,” he said.

Tr3dent’s decision to go public on a Toronto stock exchange came due to the realisation that it needed a significant amount of money to scale up its operations, McCaffrey said.

“It’s an unusual way of doing it, maybe, but for us, our view would be that we should be able to use the public markets to do the equivalent of a full-blown Series A fundraise,” he said.

“We want a $100 million company within the next five years, and that will be done through organic growth, but acquisitions as well. And going public gives us the opportunity to do that in a way that works for us, because the market we’re looking at is colossal. So this is something that I really believe we can achieve.”

This Making it Work article is produced in partnership with Enterprise Ireland