Back row, from left: Tim Crowley of Martello Low Carbon, Diarmaid Murphy of Promo Pads, Ross Graham of Ctone, Shane Sutton of Teddybots, John Maguire of Inplicity, Roman Ferrando of ThingBook and Steffan Jolley of OrderPoint. Front row, from left: Sarah Fleming, Dublin beauty entrepreneur; Susan Kealy of Career Craft; Grainne Fenton, Kerry technology entrepreneur; and Darryl Gibney of Wellclik. Image: Andres Poveda
Graduating companies from the New Frontiers programme at LINC are not short on ambition.
Twelve entrepreneurs from phase two of Enterprise Ireland’s New Frontiers Programme at the Learning and Innovation Centre (LINC), based at the Institute of Technology Blanchardstown, say they plan to generate 60 new jobs in the next 12 months.
The entrepreneurs graduated from the six-month Intensive Business Accelerator Course and will now concentrate on independently raising capital investment to grow their businesses.
‘Being able to provide start-ups with access to expert guidance, mentorship and coaching, a professional workspace in our incubator, as well as a €15,000 stipend gives them a really useful package of supports to accelerate their businesses’
– CLAIRE MAC NAMEE
“We are delighted to have guided these entrepreneurs through their start-up journey over the past six months,” said Claire Mac Namee, manager of the LINC.
“LINC has become a real magnet for top entrepreneurial talent in the capital, and we harness and develop this talent through our partnership with Enterprise Ireland to deliver programmes such as New Frontiers.
“Being able to provide start-ups with access to expert guidance, mentorship and coaching, a professional workspace in our incubator, as well as a €15,000 stipend gives them a really useful package of supports to accelerate their businesses,” Mac Namee said.
LINC is calling upon a new wave of entrepreneurs to apply for the 2017 New Frontiers programme. Potential participants can benefit from mentoring and practical access to research and knowledge centres within the IT, all within close proximity to major industrial and commercial hubs, providing them with a competitive edge and a fantastic location to grow their start-up business.
Wellclik founder Darryl Gibney from Navan, Co Meath, is one of the 12 graduates from nine counties in Ireland as well as one international participant from Spain.
“The New Frontiers Programme has been an invaluable experience on the road to building a successful, scalable, international start-up. New Frontiers gave me first-hand access to some of the smartest minds in Irish business – investors, technical developers – and their wealth of expertise,” said Gibney.
Of the 12 start-ups, four are still unable to talk about their technologies as they are patent-pending. Here are the eight that have revealed their plans:
Ctone
Ctone, founded by Ross Graham, is an online diagnosis and lead-generation tool for the audiology industry. With three currently on the team, Graham intends to employ an additional three over the coming 12 months, in sales and support roles.
Promo Pads
Diarmaid Murphy founded Promo Pads as the first internet of things (IoT) advertising network in the world, launching with Europe’s first custom tabletop point-of-sale system. With just two on the team at the moment, Murphy plans on increasing this to six over the coming months, with three technology positions and one in sales.
Wellclik
Wellclik automates annoying admin tasks such as sales, marketing and staff management, providing a front-facing on-demand booking engine for clients to save practitioners time and money so that they get on with doing what they love: looking after their clients. With two on the team, Wellclik is currently recruiting for sales consultants and PHP developers to bring the headcount to five by December 2017.
Inplicity
Inplicity is a disruptive audio technology company, changing the way we experience audio and video content through personalisation. Set up by Foxrock native John Maguire, the start-up is developing a new generation of smart and immersive audio technologies to power the next wave of content consumption through music and video streaming, virtual reality and gaming. Inplicity plans to expand from a team of two to four in the coming months.
OrderPoint Solutions
Founded by Steffan Jolley, OrderPoint Solutions provides hardware and software-as-a-service to mitigate revenue leakage for hotels in the global hospitality industry. In the next few months, Jolley plans to grow the team of two to more than seven.
ThingBook
Roman Ferrando created ThingBook in 2016 for IoT and telecoms companies with the problem of identifying and predicting actionable business information in high-speed generated data. ThingBook.io is the first equipment behavioural platform able to store, compare, analyse and predict thousands of equipment behaviours at the same time. Ferrando aims to grow the company headcount to more than 20 with engineers and key account people.
Sproose
For dry cleaners and launderette owners, Sproose has built a suite of operations management applications. It is currently operating in Dublin, Cork, Galway, Limerick and Sligo, and is in the process of setting up in Manchester. Founded by Monaghan native Pat McKenna in 2015, Sproose aims to recruit 10 more staff members over the coming year.
Teddybots
Teddybots is an Irish toy and games company that makes robot-shaped soft toys for today’s digital generation. Set up by Shane Sutton from Dublin, Teddybots is looking to build its sales and creative teams to develop digital content for release this November.
