How Karen May’s optimism helped Xocean raise €115 million and revolutionise ocean mapping

Karen May, our Stem Professional of the Year at the 2024 at the IMAGE PwC Businesswoman of the Year Awards, loves her job. She is the co-founder and CFO of Xocean, a company that provides seabed mapping services for environmental monitoring using uncrewed surface vessels (USVs). In fact, May has loved all her jobs to date. She’s one of the lucky ones who can say she is exactly where she wants to be. 

“Life is for living and you’ve got to do something that makes you happy and keeps you interested,” May says. “I would never stay in a role or a job that wasn’t keeping me happy. In life, I’m all about not being afraid to make decisions that my gut is telling me are right. In your job, you’re at your desk for 40 hours a week, maybe 60, it’s such a huge part of your life so actually enjoying it is so important.”

Karen’s positive outlook had a huge impact on Xocean closing a €115 million investment round at the beginning of the year. “Our round was oversubscribed,” she recalls. “We are very fortunate in that we are an attractive company to invest in because we’ve scaled so quickly, we’re profitable, and we’re impactful.” 

Her career started when she chose to study a business commerce degree at UCD and then a master’s in accounting at Smurfit Business School. However, long before college, maths was her favourite subject – she even helped her older sister study for Leaving Cert maths — so becoming co-founder and CFO of one of Ireland’s most exciting impact start-ups was always on the cards.

Xocean gathers seabed data in seas and oceans around the world for companies like SSE and Orsted, and government agencies including the UK Hydrographic Office, the Australian Hydrographic Office and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Founded in 2017, the company has doubled its revenue every year since it began commercial operations.

Introducing USVs to a market traditionally known to have crewed vessels at sea for lengthy periods brings an extra layer of efficiency and sustainability to ocean mapping for environmental projects. “We have a thousand times fewer emissions for the collection of the same data as a traditional vessel. We’re a carbon-neutral company,” she notes. “And it’s something that we’re really passionate about.”

The interest in renewables and environmental projects came later to May, when she took a job with Treasury Holdings where she worked on a German windfarm project. It’s also where she found her voice, which was an opportunity given to her by one of Dublin’s ‘characters’ of business, Johnny Ronan. “I was in the boardroom of a very male-dominated industry,” she explains. “Johnny Ronan was there – I can’t remember what we were discussing, but he turned around to me and said: ‘And what do you think, Karen?’”

“I was shocked he actually cared about what I thought – I’m a finance person, I’m providing all the numbers, I’m providing all the data and the analytics but for me, it was a turning point in my career when he turned around to me in that meeting, with all these executives in the room and asked what I thought. From then on, I realised that my opinion matters and what I think matters. Asking somebody what their opinion is, or what they think, is just such a powerful thing when people are more junior. I developed my confidence around that.”

May also credits having women in leadership as having a positive impact on her career. One standout was Marie O’Connor, Audit Partner at PwC, whom May worked alongside during her time at the company. “Looking back on my career, she was so supportive, and at the time it was my first job – I didn’t even notice that there would be differences between men and women in the workforce,” she explains. “It’s only now that I go, wow, she really was incredible. I think she was possibly the only female partner in PwC at the time.”

Other influences on her life include her father’s family. “He’s one of twelve children, and every one of those children became entrepreneurs in one form or another,” she says. “He and his siblings would have inspired me to go into business, which is what I did then when I left school.”

Before co-founding Xocean, May spent five years at OpenHydro, a technology company based in Carlingford, Co. Louth, that develops tidal turbines to generate electricity. It was there she met James Ives, her future co-founder at Xocean. Ives had noticed how expensive and time-consuming it was to collect data when scouting locations for turbines. That challenge became the catalyst for Xocean — an idea he later shared with May, after she had moved on from OpenHydro to live on a farm with her husband in Athlone.

Was the move to founding a start-up a daunting one? “I think it’s just in my personality to have a positive outlook on life and to approach new ventures with excitement and optimism,” she says. “So, I didn’t really find it very different from anything else I had done before.”

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