Fred Duffy

Fred Duffy is a successful Irish businessman and serial entrepreneur. Now retired, at 90 he's taken on his biggest challenge yet - writing. Fred's larger-than-life story, Adventures of a Serial Entrepreneur: Achievements over Adversity, has attracted praise both locally and internationally for its unbelievable, real-life plot twist and turns. A true page turner.

About Me: I live in Ballsbridge Dublin with my wife, Helen and are proud of four married children and eleven grandchildren. A small fat boy born in the Irish town of Monaghan in 1933, I’m now an ancient 90.

I've enjoyed a busy and thankfully exciting life with lots of fun. My book ‘Adventures of a Serial Entrepreneur’ tells the story - or most of it- so I’ll cut to the chase I was reasonably good at sport, played College and County Gaelic football, loved water skiing and especially scuba diving all over the world.

Having scraped into university, I wasn't much good at academia - still not. With little career guidance, I tried dentistry because a dentist who lived next door had a big car. But it wasn’t for me and I flunked out. I'm very grateful for that as it allowed me to escape from a life of dentistry to a life of adventure.

By a stroke of luck, I learned about a job as a Marine Radio Officer so I borrowed some money, hunkered down and qualified for my license in the British Merchant Navy. I served the next six months in Coastal waters in perhaps the roughest seas on earth. In my book you’ll find yourself in close encounters with storms, bordering on hurricanes at times. A real fast-track to mature a green teenager.

The entire experience was like a dream, one day a brash young student, the next an officer and a gentleman.

Years later, out in the big wide world and into a career which included 28 years in the Petroleum industry with many years as a serial entrepreneur and five successful startups to my credit. This Included a stint as a VC analyst, Director of an Irish Healthcare initiative in Saudi Arabia and the manufacturer of computer consumables. It was an exciting life with many unwarranted challenges; death threats, a bomb plot, banks and port suddenly closed down, competitor espionage and an unfortunate experience with the Liverpool police under suspicion of being an IRA bomber.

I clearly had an appetite for risk...