(^) Daily Mail, Friday, August 23, 2019
The City
interview
by Ruth Sunderland
A
T the age of just 43, Clare
Gilmartin is speeding
along the fast track.
Already she is running a
stock market company,
she’s made a £50m fortune and
she’s done it all while bringing
up her three young children.
As chief executive of ticketing app
Trainline, she is the first female boss
to lead a tech business through a float
on the London Stock Exchange.
Gilmartin is living proof that young
women can aspire to reach the top in
business and have a family life.
But the question being asked by inves-
tors is whether Trainline is really just
the ticket – or is it, as some suspect,
another over-hyped tech firm riding for
a fall? There is a big responsibility on
her shoulders to prove the doubters
wrong, but she wears it lightly.
Down-to-earth and likeable, Irish-born
Gilmartin couldn’t be further away from
the geeky, socially stunted stereotype of
a male tech chief executive.
She seems like any other mum you
might meet on the school run – though
not many women with young kids would
take on a chief executive job to improve
their work-life balance.
That, though, is what Gilmartin says
motivated her to make the move to run
Trainline in 2014.
She graduated from University College
Dublin with a degree in international
commerce and German.
After stints at Unilever and consultant
BCG, Gilmartin took a senior role at
California-based online auction com-
pany Ebay while still in her 20s.
But she began to find it hard to bal-
ance her job there with home life.
‘I was pregnant with my third child
and the constant to-ing and fro-ing
across to the West Coast of the US had
all got too much in terms of family life,’
she says. ‘I wasn’t going to uproot and
move there, because my parents are in
Dublin and I didn’t want to be too far
away from them.’
G
ILmArTIn adds: ‘I had a
funny conversation with my
old boss at Ebay, Doug mcCa-
llum, who had taken on the
chairmanship of Trainline. I said I was
pregnant with my third child and he
said: “That’s interesting, how would you
like to be chief executive?”’ I started
[the job] when I was five or six
months pregnant.’
Did she ever doubt she could
handle such a big new job and a
new baby?
‘I believe very strongly the world
needs more women in leadership,’
she says.
‘I got it in my head I have a duty
as part of this generation to play
my part in making that happen.
Of course I have had doubts, any-
one does, but experience has
taught me just to get up every
day, do your best and good things
will happen.’
She does admit that she quailed
at the thought of asking to work
reduced hours after her first child.
‘I was worried people were going
to see me as part-time and less
committed,’ she says.
‘In fact it didn’t have that impact
at all. It was for a short period and
it worked great for both sides.
‘It took a ridiculous amount of
courage for me to ask for that. I
would say to other women, just
get past your fears and ask for
what you want.’
The idea behind Trainline was
dreamed up in 1997 by a team
from Virgin Trains, who set up a
call centre selling tickets. In 2006
it was bought by private equity
firm Exponent for £163m.
When Gilmartin was hired five
years ago, the plan was for her to
float the business then.
It was not to be: American pri-
vate equity outfit KKr bought
the company instead, and the
stock market listing was delayed
until this year.
Unlike some other market
debuts, it got off to a roaring start.
Gilmartin cashed in a share stake
worth £16m at the float price and
has held on to a chunk valued at
around £36m, putting her per-
sonal wealth at more than £50m.
Trainline is valued at around
£2bn, which sceptics argue is a heck
of a lot for a business that made a
profit of just £10m last year.
Some are also wary because of
KKr’s involvement.
Private equity firms have a track
record of cashing in through stock
market floats that subsequently
bomb, leaving other shareholders
nursing big losses.
KKr sold £685m of shares in the
float but remains the biggest
investor with a 25pc holding.
‘We have had a pretty good chap-
ter under KKr,’ Gilmartin says.
‘We have been able to make a few
long-term investments which have
led to accelerated growth. The
business has become stronger.’
Under her leadership, Trainline
has grown rapidly from just deal-
ing with trains in the UK to offer-
ing tickets from 260 bus and train
companies in 45 countries.
It acts as a middleman, allowing
customers to buy tickets on its
website or on its app on their
mobile phone.
R
EVEnUES come from
commissions from the
bus and train compa-
nies, along with book-
ing fees from customers.
It does not offer its own special
deals, but the standard fares from
rail and bus firms. However, it
makes it easy for travellers to
compare costs and find the cheap-
est tickets, and cuts out the need
to buy a ticket at a station.
Is it all too good to be true for
Trainline and Gilmartin?
Although big profits have been
elusive so far, the brand has been
a hit with customers, with 29m
monthly active users and 80m
visits a month. Gilmartin says
there is huge potential for
growth, with 60-to-70pc of tick-
ets worldwide still bought from a
machine or a person rather than
over the internet.
The company could, however,
face competition from the likes
of taxi app Uber, or even national
rail Enquiries, which has a
ticket-finding tool online.
Another potential gremlin is a
Jeremy Corbyn government.
Labour wants to renationalise rail
and might not be keen on a profit-
making ticket sales firm.
She says, however, that Trainline
has a ‘shared agenda’ with Labour
and the Conservatives, because its
technology will encourage more
passengers to take the train, which
helps the environment.
Gilmartin is an evangelist for
technology which she sees as a
liberating force for women.
‘As a busy mother of three I can’t
afford dead time in the day so
technology really helps.’
Tech makes her more flexible so
she can try to be home by 6.30pm
in the evenings. ‘Weekends are
pretty sacred family time,’ she
says. ‘If success were to be meas-
ured by hours at my desk, I was
never going to win. But it is meas-
ured by results, and I try to breed
that culture in the company.’
Her husband pitches in. ‘He also
works, but a little bit more from
home. He is in a variety of differ-
ent things, runs a care-home busi-
ness and some investments.’
Does it matter that technology is
such a male-dominated sector?
‘I wish there were more women
in tech. These companies, they
are creating future-life experience
and if it is modelled on a male
brain it will be biased. I have two
daughters and a son, so I feel very
strongly about it.’
To get more women into tech,
‘we have to encourage girls as well
as boys to take maths’. And, she
says, women need to be assertive.
‘In my early career I found it very
difficult to have the confidence to
speak as the only woman in the
room. We need to recognise that
for any minority it is harder.
‘I tell the women I mentor that if
you are the only female in the
room, then you are representing
50pc of the population – so you
had better speak up.’
You CAN be
a mother
and stay
on the
career
fast track
£50m Trainline boss insists
her firm is not just another
tech bubble – and says...
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