When Brian Moloney lost his engineering job during 2008’s recession in Dublin, he had little idea that the setback would eventually lead to him founding the fastest growing technology company in Ireland.
Today, the founder and CEO of Belfast-headquartered StormHarvester leads a team of more than 120 people across the UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand, with further expansion plans in the US and Canada. Earlier this year, Brian was also nominated for EY Entrepreneur of the Year Ireland in recognition of StormHarvester’s rapid growth and international success.
But the journey to get there was far from straightforward.
“I landed in Australia in 2011 with very little money,” Brian said. “In fact, I had to get my dad to transfer me money just so I could meet the visa requirements to get into the country! I bought a car with my last few hundred pounds and slept in it for two weeks until I got my first pay cheque.”
Originally trained as a civil engineer, Brian began working in the wastewater and drainage sector in Australia and quickly noticed a major gap in the market around technology and data.
“I could see utilities were using old systems and old processes. I started looking for something better and couldn’t really find it, so I started building some technology myself. It genuinely just started as a hobby.”
That “hobby” would eventually become StormHarvester.
Using AI and real-time data from wastewater networks, StormHarvester helps utilities predict and prevent issues such as flooding and sewage pollution before they happen. The platform analyses data from thousands of underground sensors and sends alerts when abnormal activity is detected.
“We prevented more than 10,000 homes and businesses from flooding with sewage pollution last year in the UK,” Brian said. “That’s always been the thing that drives us and drives me personally. We’re not just creating efficiencies or saving money – we’re solving real problems.”
After returning to Northern Ireland, Brian began working with Queen’s University Belfast and received early support from Invest NI and Techstart Ventures before officially launching the business in 2017.
“The support we received locally was transformational. Invest NI, QUB and Techstart all played a huge role in helping us get the company off the ground.”
StormHarvester secured its first major breakthrough after winning a trial project with Wessex Water in 2020.
“That was the moment we realised this could become something much bigger. Once we proved the technology worked at scale, we could see there was a huge international opportunity.
Today, StormHarvester works with the wastewater sector across the UK and has expanded rapidly into Australia and New Zealand.
Despite the company’s global growth, Brian remains passionate about building the business from Belfast.
“There’s absolutely no reason you can’t build a global technology company from Northern Ireland,” he said. “We’ve got fantastic graduates, fantastic people and a brilliant work ethic here.”
Earlier this year, Brian was selected as one of just 24 entrepreneurs to join the 2026 EY Entrepreneur Of The Year Ireland programme. Now in its 29th year, the programme runs from April to November and brings together some of Ireland’s leading business founders and executives for a series of leadership, networking and learning events.
For Brian, being chosen for the cohort is recognition of StormHarvester’s growth story to date, while also providing an opportunity to learn from and build relationships with fellow entrepreneurs from across the island of Ireland. As part of the programme, Brian recently travelled to Toronto for the EY CEO Retreat where he spent time networking and sharing experiences with entrepreneurs and business leaders from across Ireland and internationally.
“It was a brilliant experience,” he said. “You’re surrounded by people from completely different sectors and backgrounds, but you quickly realise that many of the challenges around leadership, growth and scaling businesses are very similar. It definitely gave me perspective on how far StormHarvester has come, but also how much opportunity there still is ahead of us.”
If ever he’s asked what advice he would give to aspiring entrepreneurs, Brian keeps it simple.
“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. If you’ve got an idea and you want to try something, just take a swing.”
To find out more about StormHarvester visit www.stormharvester.com