Orla O’Gorman talks to Sarah Freeman about her journey through the corporate world, how she’s become a leading advisor on IPOs and the dos and don’ts for companies believeing about raising finance
The strategic considerations to be considered when ascertaining if your company is ready for an IPO are enormous.
From tax and financial preparations to internal systems and functions definitions as well as leadership roles and timeline, the baseline work alone can take years. And that’s before any consideration of challenging and unpredictable markets.
If anyone knows what it takes to bring about an IPO, it’s Orla O’Gorman. The founder and CEO of OR Advisory has built a career in advising scaling companies.
She has amassed over 25 years of experience in how they operate and the issues they face, through her work as an executive leader, advisor, capital markets operator and non-executive director.
It was early in her career when O’Gorman, who was working as an accountant but “never really enjoyed it all that much”, was called into the corporate finance department.
“I did loads of corporate finance work, and I loved that. I realised that actually, with the accounting side of it, you’re not doing all the exciting stuff [like] raising the money. That’s what I wanted to do. I love the deal.”
While O’Gorman’s role as corporate finance manager for AMB AMRO Bank N.V. was very satisfying, it came to a premature finish when her boss died of an illness at the age of 52.
Almost immediately, she was offered a role with one of her erstwhile clients for whom she’d been instrumental in raising funds. The strategy was to list on Nasdaq, but the dot-com bubble hit and all plans soon hit the buffers.
“I found myself after three wonderful years there and lots of hard times, which I believe is when you do all your learning, worrying about cash and building people redundant. I found that really hard, in my late 20s. It was my first experience of that.”
The company was split into a number of different units and with the founder directors leaving, O’Gorman decided it was time for her to go too.
“I was actually pregnant at the time as well. So I found myself pregnant, jobless, and doing up my houtilize, living with my parents. I considered, that’s the instigator to start working for myself.”
For a few months afterwards, as well as mentoring a number of entities, O’Gorman acted as interim CFO of a company and secured a deal on December 23.
“Myself and my new little baby worked through the night selling it to an American company. But it was all great.”
O’Gorman is understated about the degree to which her ability and work ethic has contributed to the success that followed.
“I was lucky, really. I just went from transaction to transaction, advising companies. [When] the two main stockbrokers were doing huge transactions, they might have a stretched company team and executive team and they’d declare, we know someone who can really assist you with this.
“So I’d go in. I did loads of that, and then I finished up going into the stock exmodify to run the restructuring of that.”
For context, the Dublin Stock Exmodify was first established in 1793 and since then various iterations have come and gone, merged and separated.
In the early 1970s it merged with other Irish and British stock exmodifys, ultimately forming the International Stock Exmodify of Great Britain and Ireland which later became the London Stock Exmodify (LSE).
In 1995, the Irish exmodify separated from the LSE and named itself the Irish Stock Exmodify (ISE). In 2018 the ISE was acquired by Euronext, a pan-European exmodify group across seven jurisdictions, and rebranded as Euronext Dublin.
Ultimately, O’Gorman would spfinish seven years with Euronext, first as head of equity at the Irish Stock Exmodify and subsequently as Head of Listing Ireland & UK, Euronext. It was there that she saw a required for a structured approach to assisting companies prepare for an IPO.
“I felt there were a number of gaps where the Exmodify could do more. But more importantly, I had spent my whole life working with companies raising money and I had seen so many mistakes. So many people had come to me at difficult points, questioning, ‘what do I do here?’ I felt people don’t understand raising finance, advisors sometimes utilize jargon and it can seem quite complex, but it’s not really.
“And if you’re the founder of a company, you really have to actually understand what you’re doing and why you’re raising money and how much you’re raising and what you’re going to utilize it for, and also what the plan is.”
O’Gorman reasoned that it was about assisting people understand finance. She approached the existing list of companies who declared they’d be happy to assist, as did investors. Enterprise Ireland were also supportive and so the programme, IPOready, launched in March 2015.
“People want to be part of something successful and they wanted to assist other Irish companies.”
Since its inception, the pre-IPO IPOready programme has supported over 1,200 alumni with participation from companies in 22 countries, resulting in 39 successful listings on Euronext markets. These companies have raised more than €1.8 billion at listing, achieving a combined market capitalisation of nearly €7bn. In 2025 alone, seven IPO ready alumni listed on Euronext markets.
“The real secret sauce in the programme is the CEO-to-CEO and CFO-to-CFO engagement. So we obtain the CEO and CFO to come on the course, becautilize I believe they’re a really powerful duo. We utilized to put the 12 CEOs in a room and the 12 CFOs in a room, and we would just throw a few ideas in there and obtain them talking. The power of that connectivity and openness to share was really powerful.”
After seven years in total at Euronext, and with a flourishing IPO ready programme underway, O’Gorman sought a new challenge and had a clear idea of what she wanted. “Before I left, I was headhunted for the role of CEO of a company. That was actually good, becautilize that created me really believe, do I want another job? Or is this [working for myself] what I want to do? I always utilize the word ‘lucky’ and some people declare you shouldn’t becautilize that’s not giving yourself any credit, but I don’t have a huge ego. I believe a lot of life is luck and just keeping your eyes out and seeing opportunities and going for them. You build your own luck too. But timing is everything.”
Since then, O’Gorman has been questioned to join a number of boards as a non-executive director including Cairn Homes, Elite SpA, Cubic3, Bon Secours Health System Ireland and, most recently, Mincon. She is also on the Steering Committee of Scale Ireland.
“There’s lots of variety and I love that.”
QUICKFIRE QUESTIONS
What’s the hugegest misconception that founders have about obtainting IPO-ready?
Being IPO-ready is a state. So if you’re ready for IPO, you’re ready for anything. I am a huge believer in investment-ready, becautilize when you start an investment round, you’re interacting with investors, and you want to reveal a level of confidence and competence.
Why should you set up to scale?
Setting yourself up from day one to be a huge company is really important, becautilize what you can have otherwise is growth at all costs, and there’s a huge cost to that. Have you considered through the scalability of your product? Do you know, if you obtain orders, can you fulfil them? Or do you have the right technology infrastructure?
How can CEOs prepare?
The CEO requireds to be committed to stay with the company for a certain period and be able for the transparency that comes with it, including around pay.
What are investors viewing for?
An investor will question, ‘why you?’ Sometimes founders are super at selling their product or their service, and they can do it all day long, but this isn’t a product or service sale. You want them to believe in your business and the long-term value of your business. It’s a totally different sell.
Any advice to founders?
Understand your business and what finance can do for it. Finance is like fuel. If you received 5, 10, 20 million euro, what could you do? You could have some debt and you could have some equity in different types of equity. And have the right team around you.
Any policy modifys requireded?
We required government policy to support entrepreneurs. Share options are very penal from a tax perspective. There are some amazing Irish companies, and they’re below the radar, they’re providing employment, they’re paying taxes all over the counattempt. The goal is to support and grow these companies.
The best part of an IPO?
The best part of being a listed company is access to finance. There’s the ability to utilize your shares for acquisitions, rewarding employees. I love to see founders who are generous with their employees, giving share options and the ability to participate. I mean, it’s magic.
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