Derek Butler

Having grown up in Castlepollard, County Westmeath, Derek Butler studied Business and Economics at Trinity College Dublin between 2000 and 2004 before undertaking a series of accountancy qualifications.

He has worked in a variety of contexts: corporate and NGO and has acted as a lobbyist for the small and medium-sized enterprise sector in Ireland against the backdrop of the Covid Pandemic. Following stints with Goodbody Stockbrokers and Ernst and Young in Dublin in the early 2000s, he worked with PriceWaterhouseCoopers in Boston and Los Angeles (mainly in the area of delivering assurance services), departing the company in 2009  as a qualified Chartered Accountant. This was followed by four years working with the Irish-based international development charity GOAL in Uganda and Haiti as, respectively, financial controller and Country director. 

The GOAL experience exposed Butler to the potential of micro-lending in lesser developed economies. That experience was reflected in his 2013 establishment of Grid Finance the core business of which has developed into facilitating cash advances for small businesses in Ireland. Grid’s business model sees these advances secured against income debit and credit card incomes from its - mainly - consumer-facing businesses. Initial start-up capital of €125,000 in 2023 was secured from a small group of investors including Enda O’Coineen’s Kilcullen Kapital. 

In 2021, Butler became an investor in and non-executive director of the Business Post Group Limited. His Endeavour Fund Investor Nominees vehicle bought out the shares of previous shareholder Irish Studio Media Limited and acquired additional shares from O’Coineen’s Kilcullen Kapital.