Irish start-up CloudKPI begins Women’s Startup Lab journey

22 Sep 2017

Image: Lucky Business/Shutterstock

Great news for Irish start-up CloudKPI as co-founders join prestigious accelerator.

Irish-founded SaaS start-up CloudKPI is one of 12 selected by the prestigious Women’s Startup Lab for Batch 12 of the programme.

Founded by Maeve Kneafsey and Brenda Jordan, the company provides analytics for scaling B2B SaaS, as well as reporting and predictive forecasting tools. It was selected last year by the Access Silicon Valley programme run by Enterprise Ireland, and now has offices both in Dublin and California.

They will be joined by female founders from Spain, Australia, Seattle and Oklahoma among others at this week’s event.

Community for female founders

The Women’s Startup Lab initiative was founded by Hiroshima native, Ari Horie, formerly of IBM, who went on to found her own company.

The idea was borne from her seeking a sense of community in an often unforgiving Silicon Valley, described by Women’s Start-up Lab’s Randi Salko as a “man’s world”. Horie created the scheme to build that sense of community she couldn’t find anywhere else.

As for what Kneafsey and Jordan can expect from the experience? Salko explained to Siliconrepublic.com that Women’s Startup Lab is all about support.

The logo, based on the Japanese character ‘hito’ roughly translates as “two sides leaning on one another equals human”. As Salko puts it, “it takes a village to raise a founder”.

The event involves mentorship from industry titans like Phil Libin, founder of Evernote, and Fran Maier, founder of Match.com. As well as getting the opportunity to learn from these experts in a welcoming and inclusive environment, major venture capitalists and angel investors will be at the pitch event at the end of the accelerator on 29 September.

Demo day

Salko described it as being more of a “demo day” than a regular funding pitch, so it’s a great chance for these pre-A stage start-ups to implement all of the expertise they glean from the next few days – including CloudKPI.

As for what Women’s Startup Lab want to accomplish, that’s simple, said Salko: “We want to create a level playing field.”

Ellen Tannam was a journalist with Silicon Republic, covering all manner of business and tech subjects

editorial@siliconrepublic.com