Martin McKay

EY World Entrepreneur Of The Year™ Class of 2023, Ireland
Founder and CEO of Texthelp

Share the joy of Martin McKay’s winning moment at Entrepreneur Of The Year™ Ireland.

Martin McKay develops assistive technology so students and workers can communicate with accuracy and fluency.

When his father suffered a stroke, Martin McKay uncovered a business opportunity: leverage assistive technology to help people with reading and writing disabilities. In true entrepreneurial fashion, Texthelp was birthed and today brings educational tools to millions of people to enhance their learning and working styles.

Founder and CEO, Martin, showed great resilience and exceeded expectations despite early setbacks such as banks refusing to fund the startup and investors imposing cash constraints. He grew his business organically and through M&A by developing new and existing assistive technology products. He also facilitated the identification and integration of three acquisitions, which enabled Texthelp to dominate the UK, US and Nordic markets.

Martin initially found entry into the US market difficult but persevered because he understood the commanding returns that could be achieved, particularly with US school districts. Starting out in the US, Texthelp had three main competitors. Today, two of those competitors no longer exist, and one has been acquired.

Martin has shown that doing well in business and doing good for society can be achieved at the same time: his broader mission is to advance the literacy and understanding of 1 billion people by 2030.