Richard Curran’s family ran bars in Dublin, so when it came to exploring the world, he had a wealth of experience and knew that finding work abroad would be easy. I did.
“I went to St Michael’s in Ballsbridge and then to university in Maynooth,” he recalls. However, when his course did not meet expectations, he took time off and worked in a London bar for a year.
“I returned to Dublin in 1992 to study Accounting at NCI (National University of Ireland) and between my second and final year I decided to take a Tefl course to teach English. I paid £50 and I got my certificate at the end of the weekend.”
It turns out that deciding where to use his new skills is random.
“I had heard that there were a lot of jobs in Prague and Milan, so I went to the Üsit (office) on the quay with a friend from university.The flight to Prague was £5 cheaper than anywhere else. I decided to go there.”
Karan knew nothing about Prague when he arrived and had no place to stay. “We found an Irish bar and spoke to a guy my sister knew. He said he was looking for staff.”
While he was working there, his friend went looking for a daytime teaching job. Karan meets some girls, clashes with them, and his friend disappears at a music festival in France. He never saw him again.
It was Prague in the 1990s. My job was to explain to the Microsoft boss why it took three months to install the phone lines.
Falling in love with a Czech girl meant putting off going to university, by which time he was running the popular Irish bar James Joyce and starting teaching English. He returned to Ireland with his Czech girlfriend to pursue a degree in accounting at NCI and returned to Prague in 1997.
“In the early days, networking was done at international football clubs, and 30 years later we still play with them. We held a tournament in the village of
Another source of networking was in Irish bars, where Curran met a fellow Irish man who offered him a position as an accountant at Cushman & Wakefield.
“It was an old British surveying company and I had never done accounting before. It was a problem-solving business. It was Prague in the 1990s and nothing was going right. It was about explaining to the Microsoft manager why it was taking three months to install the line. The whole thing was a crisis. I was managing people.”
Karan was given his first cell phone in the late 1990s. The next day, the number was sent as an emergency number to 240 tenants and kept ringing. He worked in property management for three years before moving into office leasing. “Commercial leasing meant finding office tenants, and in the 1990s there was little infrastructure, so everyone was working in residential properties. Even Deloitte was working in apartments.”
From a professional perspective, Karan has seen the modern office and retail industry as a whole evolve. What took 300 years to happen in Britain took 20 years to do in the Czech Republic. I was headhunted to join CBRE in 2004 when it was just starting out in commercial real estate services.
“We started with 20 people and grew to become the largest real estate business in the world. In the 15 years I was managing director, the company grew to 400 people.”
I still believe there is a chance[in Prague]but my advice to anyone moving here is to try to learn the language and not give up.
In 2019, just before the world went into lockdown, Karan took a year off to garden. “My travel plans were put on hold and I joined Knight Frank CZ as Managing Director in 2021. When I joined we were a small business with 40 employees and now we have 70. We’re not trying to be CBRE, but again, we’re project managing commercial real estate.”
Karan brought about a huge change in the market. “Eighty percent of commercial business used to be international. Now 80 percent is local. Czechs, like the Irish, like to own property and have expanded into Poland and Romania. They has recently become the largest investor in Central Europe.” Growth sectors in the Czech Republic include IT, with many new businesses starting up.
According to him, Prague is geographically smaller than Dublin. He is married to a Czech woman and says the city is a great place to raise children and has a great education system.
“There’s no violence on the streets, so we had no problem letting our kids roam around the city. There’s also good public transport. Munich is 3 hours away, Budapest is 3 hours away. You can get there in half a minute, and the road network is very good.”
Attracted by Curran’s success, his younger brother followed him to Prague, where they now share ownership of the Irish Times, one of the Old Town’s most successful Irish bars. I’m doing it.
Curran believes he arrived in Prague at the perfect time. “I believe there’s still (a chance), but my advice to anyone moving here is to try to learn the language and don’t give up. Say yes to things and have a solid plan. If not, try something else. ”
