Conall Laverty is the founder and CEO of WIA, a start-up company that works with property owners and developers to deploy Internet of Things hardware to reduce cost and improve their buildings’ performance.
WIA provides a simple way for people and things to communicate with just a few lines of code. With over 10,000 clients across 100 countries, it has attracted €1 million in venture capital funding with backers including Suir Valley Ventures, Enterprise Ireland and NDRC. As a result, Conall has become a key figure in the global Internet of Things ecosystem.
Conall is one to watch. He has been a speaker at high-profile conferences including the Mobile World Congress, Dublin Tech Summit, RIOT, Web Summit, TechConnect and the ICONs Festival. He has also been featured in top-tier publications such as TechCrunch, Yahoo Finance, the Irish Times, Fora, Silicon Republic, Sunday Business Post, Business World, and, most impressively, he was named as one of Forbes’ 2019 30 under 30.
Austin Spivey is the COO of WIA. She is Conall’s right-hand woman, ensuring the day-to-day tasks of the company run smoothly. Hailing from Silicon Valley, her background is in managing initiatives across business operations, project management, finance, events, digital marketing and consumer marketing.
Austin and Conall met in the most Irish way possible. Austin decided to go travelling after a company she was working for in the U.S. went under. She came to Europe and visited Ireland after hearing that it was becoming the tech hub of Europe. During her time in Dublin, she got talking to a lady in a coffee shop and shared her story. A man sitting behind her overheard and then approached her, saying he knew someone looking for a COO. After an exchange of numbers, Conall and Austin met and she moved to Dublin six weeks later.
WIA is based in Dogpatch Labs. Their unique end-to-end systems tackle challenges associated with IoT projects at every stage, building things and bringing ideas to life.