The Impossible Dream: The spectacular rise and fall of Steorn, one of the Celtic Tiger’s most audacious start-ups, reviewed

By Simon Cocking, review of The Impossible Dream: The spectacular rise and fall of Steorn, one of the Celtic Tiger’s most audacious start-ups. Available here.

‘To understand Celtic Tiger Ireland, you need to understand Steorn; and to understand Steorn, you need to understand its founder, Shaun McCarthy.’

‘I put a quarter of a million of my own money into Steorn. That’s the nature of being a founder or proponent of these things. Nobody would’ve won as much as me if I’d pulled it off – and I still think one day I’ll pull it off.’ Shaun McCarthy

In the summer of 2006, Ireland had reached the apex of the Celtic Tiger. Drunk on money, we were rich and we weren’t handling it particularly well.  On such fertile ground a company called Steorn hit the headlines when its founder Shaun McCarthy took an advertisement in the Economist to announce they had discovered a machine that could create energy from nothing. It was nothing less than a complete and immediate end to the world’s energy crisis. 

Like the company’s founder, the advertisement was bold and brash and, in the climate that prevailed, believable. The old rules no longer applied. If the price of a house could go up forever, it was possible that someone could create energy from nothing, wasn’t it? 

Steorn’s list of investors was a veritable who’s who of high society during the Celtic Tiger years, with high-profile figures from virtually all of Dublin’s best-known brokerages and financial institutions, barristers, solicitors and bankers, doctors and consultants, academics and accountants, pensions advisors and business consultants.

When the demonstration of the technology inevitably ended in spectacular failure McCarthy was pegged as a scam artist, a fraud, a conman, and he lost his money and his reputation.  

But he wasn’t the man people thought he was. He wasn’t a conman or a chancer or a wide boy: he was a zealot and a true believer. 

In The Impossible Dream, a fascinating parable of Celtic Tiger Ireland, McCarthy speaks openly for the first time to author Barry J Whyte about this most memorable episode from Ireland’s Celtic Tiger history, the founder mentality and the lessons to be learned about believing in the impossible.  

The Impossible Dream: The spectacular rise and fall of Steorn, one of the Celtic Tiger’s most audacious start-ups, reviewed

In some ways the premise of this book is nuts. Yes the idea sounded exciting, but they never, ever, built a working model of it. Yes they came out with lots of exciting hype, and terrible self flagellation when they missed ever single deadline for a real, working public demonstration. At times, reading this book, you wonder how on earth, did they manage to raise so much money for a project that was consistent only in it’s failed deadlines and missed targets.

The book tries to explain this through bringing in the wider context of the Celtic Tiger Ireland period. The country was awash with money, people were buying second home properties in Bulgaria, investing in all sorts of ventures. This was seen as cheap money, nothing ventured, nothing gained, and the chief face and spokesperson, Shaun McCarthy was a convincing advocate for the project. Somehow, along the way though, this departed from any willingness to hold the project to real and actual goals achieved.

Last year we reviewed Bad Blood, another tale of a relentless and convincing huckster who kept spinning bigger and bigger lies until the whole edifice collapsed. McCarthy would argue his intent was never to scam or swindle anyone, and he still, might yet, achieve the long desired breakthrough. Maybe so, but it would be wise for anyone looking to invest in new technology to hold off perhaps until there is actually, ever, any working prototypes. Just because he believes it is coming soon, you would hope that everyone else holds off till something more tangible is being offered.

Overall this all makes for a slightly curious book, because you are constantly wondering how it ran for so long, and raised so much money and so many backers. I guess it goes to show you need to be all the more careful with those who seem to have drunk deeply from the Koolaid.

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