Nutriband CEO Gareth Sheridan: “The economy is booming, but that’s a punch to the gut – when we’re a top 5 performer in every major index but our own people can’t afford to live here"

It all started with a Nokia 3310.

Before VR girlfriends and crypto wallets, the humble phone was the hot tech that everyone wanted – including a teenage Gareth Sheridan. To get one, he was taken out by his dad for a day’s work painting houses, so he could earn the money himself.

“That’s the early memory that structured my mindset,” Sheridan says. “Having someone say, ‘Of course you can have that, what days can you come to work?’ was very humbling. It wasn’t a handout.  He purposely picked a cold February day to paint the outside of a house too.

“He really hit home to me that if I don’t want to be answering to people like him and doing jobs like that, I should make sure that I was my own boss. So I knew I wanted to be my own boss and have my own company. I just wasn’t sure of what that was going to be.”

The Nokia allowed Sheridan to play Snake. The experience gave him a drive to succeed, beginning his remarkable entrepreneurial story, documented by the Terenure native’s new book, From No To Nasdaq. Sheridan’s father had another, less intentional influence. The nitroglycerin patch he wore for heart medication sparked an idea.

“I was in college and I noticed it when I was trying to think of thesis ideas,” Sheridan says.  “I thought, ‘If you could take heart medication, what else could we deliver like that?’ I got really obsessed with the idea and started researching it more and more, and found that no one was really focused on setting up a patch delivery company.”

Fast forward and Sheridan, now in his thirties, is the CEO of Nutriband – a Nasdaq-listed pharmaceutical company specialising in transdermal patch treatments. He believes they’re on track to become a billion-dollar business, ethically tackling the opioid crisis in an industry where a patient-first approach is all too rare.

White collar dramas like Succession paint CEOs as being short-tempered, cynical, conniving or drug addicted, sometimes all at once. Sheridan defies the archetype: tall, soft-spoken and self-effacing, he’s casually dressed and convivial when he greets us in his apartment in South Dublin, where he lives with his wife and two-year-old daughter.

“Ireland was always home, so it was always part of the plan,” he explains, having moved home from the States earlier in the year. “It’s good to be back. Being gone for seven years, it’s almost coming back to a different Ireland, so much has changed.”

One of those changes was sudden and life-altering.

“There was no prep time, we didn’t go through the pregnancy period where you’re planning on things,” he says of adopting his daughter. “It’s typical of how our lives have been – everything’s thrown at you and you deal with it. But I like it that way. Things like that make you man up very quickly.

“A family member of my wife wasn’t in a position to be a mother, so we said we’d look after her temporarily. After a day we were like ‘Where are the papers?’ That moment where she grabs your finger – it was the moment for us when it felt right. We bonded really quickly and said we were happy to adopt. It just worked out well, and is perfectly fitting of how our story is.”

Nutriband beginnings

Nutriband took root in the US, where they’ve grown to have operations across Orlando, Atlanta and Charlotte. Sheridan says there are plans to bring the company home to Ireland. It’s where the idea was born, after all, starting out as his DIT thesis, before evolving into a business selling vitamin patches.

“When I started, the only place to grow it really was America. But I’m quite a proud Irish person. I would like to bring the company back to where it started and hire people here and grow it here. That’s in the company’s future, but it’s not quite the right time just yet.

“That was the original concept,” he continues, shifting his attention to the vitamin patches. “It was more to gauge how people would react to taking something simple like a vitamin that way, and then use that information, if it was positive, to support people taking medication that way.

“I spent a couple of years knocking on doors trying to sell those vitamin patches. I was making hundreds of euros a year. It wasn’t overly successful or anything, but the data we were collecting was good.”

Still in Ireland, Sheridan started entering local entrepreneurship competitions, some of which he won, injecting cash flow into his burgeoning business. He was named ‘Young Entrepreneur of the Year’ in 2014 for setting up Nutriband, and won €20,000 as South Dublin’s best young entrepreneur.

“I’m an entrepreneurial ambassador at TU Dublin, so I keep in touch with the next generation of ideas and entrepreneurs and provide guidance where I can,” he adds. “It’s good to give back a bit because some of the professors at D.I.T, like Tom Cooney, my entrepreneurial professor, were very good to me and supportive.”

Not everyone was as encouraging early on.

“There’s a big government agency that told me my idea wasn’t going to work,” he says. “Ultimately it was probably a good thing. The fact that so many people told us ‘no’ early on was a driver for me. I remember coming out of that meeting when I was told it’s not going to work, and talking to myself in the car saying: ‘I’ll fucking show you!’”

And show them he did. His vision led him to America, where Sheridan got in touch with a group of scientists and investors based out of Salt Lake City, Utah, who saw potential in his patches. Breaking into the US pharmaceutical space was never going to be easy. Sherdian regularly flew back and forth, often having to ask his parents for plane fare.

One encounter changed everything.

“A mutual connection said that there’s this lady, Dina, and she has an eight-hour layover before flying to Ukraine,” Sheridan begins.  “I was very close to not meeting her: it was a rainy Tuesday and I wasn’t that bothered. But something said, ‘Just go meet her’.

“She ended up introducing me to Serguei Melink , who is now the chairman of the company. Had I not taken that meeting, I don’t know where the company would be today.”

His relationship with Serguei – now one of his closest associates, who helped Sheridan regain ownership of the company after a bad business deal – was similarly fortuitous.

“One of the only reasons we met up in person was that his in-laws at the time made a terrible turkey. So he met me in Vegas for Thanksgiving and we met and structured the plan.

“You make your bit of luck. If I had not met with Dina, I wouldn’t have been introduced to Serguei. Had his in-laws made a cracking turkey, maybe we wouldn’t have met. Those little things that change the trajectory are interesting to look back on.”

OTC Drama

The plan was to grow the business by listing Nutriband on the Over-The-Counter (OTC) market, a way to buy and sell stocks directly between parties without going through a formal stock exchange like the NYSE or Nasdaq.

It’s often used by smaller or newer companies that don’t meet the strict requirements to list on big exchanges, making it easier – but sometimes riskier – for investors to trade their shares.

It has a reputation for being a Wild West in the investing world, made famous in The Wolf Of Wall Street as the place where Jordan Belfort started his pump and dump schemes.

“That’s the kind of the arena we were in,” Sheridan says. “But we quickly grew out of that. We never acted like one of those companies. We always saw it as a stepping stone to the Nasdaq. The way I describe it to people is it’s like starting off in the Conference League and you’re trying to get to the Premiership.”

Time in the lower divisions taught Sheridan a lot about the shark-infested world he was getting into.

“A lot of things happen that would mature you and get you to have a different mindset on things,” he shares. “I wholeheartedly believe right now that Wall Street is built on companies failing, not succeeding. There’s a lot of shorting that happens on stocks. There’s a lot of trying to get stock values to go down using specific techniques like naked shorting, crippling companies.

“Raising money on Wall Street is not a positive thing. Every week we are actively turning down money that is being thrown at us from investment banks. Firstly, we don’t need it, secondly it’s dilutive to existing shareholders and thirdly, we don’t necessarily want these guys on our books. We don’t want them as shareholders, or the games that come with those investments.”

Sheridan elaborates further on the subject.

“I remember turning down our first offer for a million dollars and it was one of the hardest things to do because we didn’t have money in the bank,” he continues. “I was driving for Uber and my wife was a nanny for two kids who weren’t exactly well-behaved. All of a sudden, somebody’s offering you a million dollars into the company and you’re thinking this is great.

“But Serguei, who has experience in this space, said, ‘We can’t take it because the stock price will go to 20cents tomorrow. These guys are not reputable, they’re going to manipulate and play games with the shares.’

“So we turned it down and that was a maturing moment as well. These are just examples of little things along the way that got us to where we are today. Recently we turned down an offer of 15 to 30million dollars.”

Sheridan’s company was built with frugality as well as caution.

“There’s no Ferraris in the front lot, there’s no major bonuses that go out every year, it’s all very reasonable. I’m bottom 5% of executives on the Nasdaq in terms of compensation. And that’s how it should be, because we’re not quite ready.

“Next year when we get FDA approval, we can see what the company is in a position to spend and afford.”

Despite the apparent level-headedness, there were some road bumps. The most serious came in the form of an investigation from the SEC, or Securities and Exchange Commission, the US government agency that oversees the stock market.

In simple terms, if a company wants to sell shares to the public or list on a stock exchange, the SEC makes sure they’re playing by the rules.
The investigation stemmed from Nutriband submitting a filing to the SEC. The information relied on professional opinions from two lawyers and a dermatologist, about how a new product would be classified by the FDA.

“They all came back and told us it would not be a medical device, and be classified as more of a supplement. So in good faith, we used that description in our SEC filing, and it just happened to be wrong.”

The SEC alleged that Sheridan and co. submitted inaccurate and potentially misleading information.

“When you get that letter in the post, it feels very serious,” Sheridan explains. “We never actually moved forward with that product, no one used it and it was never produced. They argued that if someone invested in that opinion, then they invested on poor information. But nobody invested, because we didn’t have trading stock at the time.”

Still, the scrutiny was intense.

“They flew me down and put me in a nice Hyatt in downtown Miami. That was the point I knew it was serious. The deposition itself was kind of all over the place. It wasn’t targeted at the issue that they focused on in the end. Part of me was thinking, are they just fishing or making sure we’re doing everything right?

“We were an OTC company at the time, and they don’t have a great reputation. So the SEC were looking at us and their mindset was, ‘This is another OTC company that is up to no good.’

“But we always acted like a Nasdaq company. Our filings were always on time. We always made sure that we did things right. We did our audits. We acted like the company we were trying to become.”

Eventually, after Sheridan lawyered-up with the little money his company had left, a cease and desist was agreed.

“It was a wake-up call and a reset. Instead of getting three inputs for something, next time we’ll get four.”

All this was happening as he was getting married.

“In the back of my mind in my wedding photos I was thinking, ‘I’m getting sued by the American government!’ On our honeymoon, our lawyer was able to get the SEC to agree to that cease and desist. So we celebrated that night and that was it.

“I wouldn’t change that happening, because it makes you grow up and look at things differently.”

There were also some painful turndowns from Nasdaq along the way.

“When we got our first Nasdaq rejection, it was a feeling of dread that I’ve never had and never had since,” Sheridan shares. “We had run out of money, and were on the brink of having millions of dollars.

“I was sitting in a Hertz car rental dealership, because my car was so bad that it didn’t qualify for Uber, and Hertz had a deal where you could use one of their cars and they take 40% of your earnings.

“In the back of my head I was thinking, ‘Just a couple more days of this.’ Then our lawyer called and said that they rejected us. They said they don’t like the SEC issue. And wanted to wait a year to make sure there were no more slip-ups.

“It was another year of living paycheck to paycheck – if there was one – and my wife having apples thrown at her from snotty rich kids. It was tough.

“Our lawyer said a year isn’t that long, and that I should get over myself. In the end we used it to our advantage. When we went back to Nasdaq a year later, the company was 7.5 million dollars more valuable.”

Big Pharma

Nutriband finally became a Nasdaq-listed company in 2021. Sheridan himself got to ring the famous bell to open trading on Wall Street, which he described as a vindicating “welcome to the club” moment.

Their first major product, set to roll out next year, is AVERSA: an abuse-deterrent technology with an FDA-approved fentanyl patch.

The word “fentanyl” however, evokes a somber image of suffering addicts, bent over in subway carriages and passed out in doorways; victims of an opioid crisis which has swallowed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans.

“Fentanyl is 50 times stronger than heroin,” Sheridan explains. “The lead tip of the pencil is a fatal overdose. But if you make it correctly, and you use it right, it’s really effective for things like end-of-life care and cancer pain, the round-the-clock pain that people need that sort of relief for.

“The problem we’re tackling has snowballed. We’re all familiar with the Dopesick shows and documentaries. Regulators and public perception went extremely anti-opiate to the point where prescription rates dropped and guidelines became less opiate friendly.

“There were genuine pain patients that could not access adequate care. Someone who relied on fentanyl for the round-the-clock pain who was being told to take a Nurofen. That became problematic, because it fuelled the illegal opioid market. On top of that, suicide rates among people dealing with chronic pain drastically increased.

“Our chairman had a family friend who was dealing with chronic pain and couldn’t get adequate care. He left a note behind saying he didn’t want to die but he didn’t have a choice. He couldn’t deal with it anymore and left the family behind and committed suicide.

“We solve that with our product and it’s a really nice feeling to be able to do that.”

Big pharma as a whole doesn’t have a great reputation, mainly due to the perception that companies prioritise profits over people’s healthcare. The industry’s unpopularity came to the fore last December, when United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson was shot in New York. It was telling that there wasn’t a lot of public sympathy for the executive.

“At the end of the day he’s a person with a wife and children,” Sheridan says. “And it’s certainly not something I would condone or get behind. But it does show that people are angry.

“Doctors take an oath to look after a patient, I don’t think pharma execs should be any different. You should not price patients out of care, that’s it.

“When we’re bringing our first product to market, we’ll be coming in at a similar price to what’s there now. Typically when a new drug comes in, a big pharma company goes for a 1000% markup. It’s done at the expense of coverage for patients.

“We spoke to insurance companies – they’re willing to pay a 20-50% premium. That makes sure we can go in at a lower price; insurance companies are willing to cover it and patients can have access to care.”
Sheridan elaborates on the thought.

“And when you run the numbers, trying to corner the market is a much better return anyway,” he says. “We’re going to be the only player. All of our competition is 95% less safe and we’re the same price, with insurance coverage.

“We could, hypothetically, go start a company and make a load of money and live a lavish lifestyle. But what do you leave behind? I love the fact that we’re going to build what I believe will be a billion dollar company, but we’re going to do it by doing good. We’re going to make sure that we’re not doing it at the expense of patients, and we’ll be saving thousands of lives.

“In college we learned there was a car company in the ‘70s that received feedback that there was a problem with the brakes in 0.01% of the cars that were manufactured. And they ran the numbers and concluded that the payouts to victims’ families would be less than the recall. That stuck with me and I never wanted to be part of an organisation that had that mentality.”

What does Sherdian make of the Trump administration and their policies?

“I was very vocal in recent moments about the tariff situation,” Sheridan shares. “They don’t really affect us, because all our operations are in America. But what I could not wrap my head around was that tariffs on pharmaceuticals were even in discussion.

“They’ve been exempt for 30 years because the impact it would have on people’s access to treatment would be catastrophic. People would get priced out of chemotherapy and die because they can’t afford to live. And that’s something that bothers me.”

Housing Crisis

Since moving back to Dublin, Sheridan has had another mission in mind.

“I’ve become obsessed with how we can fix this housing issue,” he shares. “I’ve been meeting with lots of people and organisations in the space. We have the ability to solve it, but nobody’s making the hard decisions or looking at it pragmatically.

“The system is broken. It’s part and parcel of successive governments and their lack of foresight and preparation. The housing crisis should have been seen 15 or 20 years ago, with the way the economy was going and the way the country was heading. How has it caught us off guard that all of a sudden people want to live and build businesses here?

“We’re constantly looking back at things we should have seen and trying to fix them when it’s already too late. We need to start looking forward. That’s a mentality thing that needs to change.”

He considers the paradox of the current situation.

“The economy is booming, but that’s a punch to the gut – when we’re a top 5 performer in every major index but our own people can’t afford to live here,” Sheridan continues. “There’s a massive disconnect there.

“Leo Varadakar, as Taoiseach, described the housing crisis as a national emergency 10 years ago. My understanding of that word is something that has to be tackled pretty quickly. A fire in a house is an emergency – you put it out quickly.

“Here we are 10 years later, not only missing the amount of houses we were supposed to hit on a yearly basis to catch up, but missing it by half. And it comes down to the fact that we have a planning system fit for the Flintstones. That needs to be scrapped and modernised.

“Centralised planning doesn’t work. We need to listen to councils more. To local feedback, the infrastructure needs to be improved. I’ve met with councillors and their frustration level is crazy.”

There is, Sheridan affirms, a profound human impact from all of this.

“You can’t talk to a single person in the country who isn’t feeling in one way or another frustrated by housing. It’s an issue facing younger generations. I have friends who are still living in their parents’ boxroom because they can’t even find a place to rent.

“There’s a system-wide failure that should have been foreseen. It’s touted as an issue that affects young people, but what’s my two year old daughter’s generation gonna deal with? Are they gonna have a single chance in hell of staying in this country?

“It affects everybody. How many grandparents up and down the country only know their grandkids through an iPad in Australia now? It splits families.”

His passion and track record has led some to suggest a foray into politics.

“Interestingly, a couple of councillors have asked if I would put housing at the top of the narrative and have a crack at the Àras. That was very flattering, but one thing that I pulled from that was that it is time that a younger candidate became president, to keep these issues on top of the narrative.

“Michael D did a great job commemorating our first 100 years. Someone needs to do an excellent job getting the next 100 started. That doesn’t happen with a proxy Fine Gael candidate in the Áras.”

Support network

Whether he’s sitting at home or in the boardroom, Sheridan makes clear in his book that you can’t do this sort of stuff alone. He met his wife Heidi in Utah. They eventually married so he could stay in America and continue chasing his dream after his visa expired.

“Heidi was a rock,” Sheridan says. “I don’t know how she’s still with me, to be honest. Minus the fact that she’s way better looking than I am… She really went through it. There’s a lot that has to be credited to her for making this a reality.”

His parents were also supportive.

“They gave me money from their savings at the start, to have a crack. I only recently had a conversation with my mother about it. I asked her, ‘You must have come to a point where you were going to tell me to come home and be an accountant. Why did you invest in the first place, was it not a mad idea?’

“She said, ‘We didn’t understand the product, but we sat down and said that you deserve a chance.’ That was really nice to hear. Not once through all of the phone calls home asking for help with rent, or saying that we’ve been denied from Nasdaq, or getting sued by the government – never once did they say it’s time to come home. They let me figure it out.

“There was a support system all round and I hit the jackpot.”

• From No To Nasdaq is out now via Tara Press.