Meet the co-founder of CitySwift
Brian is a tech-savvy entrepreneur and former CitiBank analyst with a range of experience. Interested in computer programs from a young age, Brian's studies included software engineering, business strategy and finance. He’s led big data and complex optimisation projects, specifically for the mobility sector. With his IT experience and knowledge of bus systems, he started CitySwift, a data-driven planning technology for urban bus networks, with his friend Alan Farrelly in 2016.
There’s always a lightbulb moment before the beginning of a new venture. What was that moment for you?
My best friend Alan Farrelly, had a bus depot as his backyard, so we both grew up around buses. Whenever we met up, we would always talk through various business ideas, but we would always come back to how we could modernise the bus industry. Then one evening we were discussing the disruption in the taxi sector, with the advent of tech-driven innovators such as Uber and Hailo which were making huge waves in the industry. We recognised that buses by contrast had hardly moved and set about figuring out if we could change that.
Our first step was to analyse the data. We could see that in Alan’s family business, the buses spent just 15% of the time on the road and 85% at the depot not generating revenue. Based on that, we decided to launch a website to allow consumers to suggest places they’d like to go, which led to bus rental services for matches and concerts. We looked at census data to find new routes too, but we ran out of road due to the cost of scaling it up. We then realised there was an opportunity to develop software to help bus companies optimise their timetabling, a B2B model that could be scaled. And this was how CitySwift was born.
What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learnt so far as an entrepreneur?
Don’t expect overnight success! People think tech startups go from zero to unicorn in twelve months, but the reality is that rarely happens. It takes time to find the right product/market fit, raise capital, build a great team and create a compelling product or service. Everybody overestimates what they can do in 12 months, but they underestimate what they can achieve in five years.
What keeps you motivated as an entrepreneur when you hit bumps in the road?
Passion for the industry and knowing I can make a meaningful difference within it. I think passion is super important, no matter what area you're working in. As Alan and I got deeper into public transport, we realised that our personal passion for buses could make a huge impact on a wider societal scale.
Working with a co-founder can be tricky, so understanding and compromise are important. How have you both found the process of building a business together? What makes it work?
The fact that we are both so passionate about the industry, aligned on the future vision and the potential impact we are making, makes it work. We’ve found that communication, a collaborative work ethic and transparency are key and it helps that we’ve built a culture where the whole team at CitySwift shares a passion for mobility – they are excited about their roles and the opportunity to help deliver the highest quality public transport across cities and communities around the world.
What does your business offer its target audience?
Our overall aim is to improve service performance, maximise profitability and help our customers grow passenger numbers across their network. Our specialist bus data engine uses AI, big data and machine learning to help bus operators to make more informed data-driven decisions and understand new travel patterns, which will enable them to improve journey times, reliability and enhance the on-board experience for passengers. This will help encourage a modal shift from private cars to sustainable public transport – key to tackling climate change and reducing congestion and emissions in towns and cities.
What’s the most common problem your customers approach you with?
Public transport operators want us to help them improve service performance, maximise profitability and grow their networks. They recognise that they need to make more informed decisions around matching vehicle supply with passenger demand, they often just don’t know how. Our platform puts a wealth of information at their fingertips, presented in a meaningful and actionable format. It can also create optimised timetables that take into account traffic, events, and hundreds of other external factors.
How do you set yourself apart from other businesses in your industry?
We're not 'just another tech company' trying to adapt our product for the bus sector. CitySwift was built from the ground up for bus companies. Our team has a huge level of experience across the bus industry and a unique understanding of its operational challenges. We have deep public transportation domain knowledge and our technology offering is truly unique – with its ability to integrate multiple data sources from existing legacy systems and also external big data and smart cities sources. Our proprietary data and encryption engine is the only solution of its kind in this space.
And Alan knows the bus industry so well, having worked in just about every role within the industry, from driving and customer service to scheduling and operations. It might be a bit cheesy, but we like to say that 'buses are in our blood'.
What plans do you have for your business over the next few years?
We’ve got some very cool new products in the pipeline and our next wave of growth is all about international expansion and scaling the business globally. We’re working with the UK’s biggest transport companies and have some massive opportunities lined up in North America, Europe, the Middle East and beyond. It's going to be a super exciting time for everybody in the company.
What are your top three tips to hire and develop new talent?
When it comes to hiring and developing new talent, startups and young entrepreneurs need to be aware that businesses go through various stages of growth and CitySwift is very much in ‘scale-up mode’ right now. And as we’ve scaled, it’s become less about the company’s goals and more about the team’s goals – and the individual goals of every single team member.
Along the way, we have learnt the importance of giving everyone a solid career roadmap, flexibility around their personal lives ensuring a good work-life balance and a strong support system. We reward people fairly and encourage (and act on) employee feedback. I believe that if you look after each and every team member, you’ll get that back tenfold in terms of effort and commitment – it’s certainly something I’ve found to be true over the last five years.
What are your top tips for entrepreneurs wanting to get their business out there?
Be resilient and stay focused. When you start a business, not everything will work, but the important thing is to learn from the things that don’t.
How do you believe the evolution of tech will impact your industry over the next 10 years?
The next phase of digital transformation in the transport industry will need to centre around the creation of congestion and emission-free cities.
Reducing congestion in urban areas that face increasing challenges from high traffic levels and carbon emissions should be a priority for the transport sector. Smart cities effectively utilising AI and big data will pave the way for such carbon-neutral futures and will form the backbone of sustainable transport. Alongside this, the sector now needs to be more active in the development of dynamic public transport, especially as authorities start to see demand for travel is increasing again, and that integrated, accessible, safe and reliable networks are vital for prosperity.
