Pictured (l-r) are Wia founder Conall Laverty, NDRC CEO Ben Hurley and Bank of Ireland’s Liam McLoughlin, via Shane O'Neill
Following a pitch competition held at the NDRC in Dublin, internet of things (IoT) start-up Wia has secured €30,000 funding for its plan to speed up connected device creation.
Conall Laverty’s Wia saw off 10 rival companies at an investors day at NDRC this week, adding €30,000 in follow-on funding to its arsenal
Although it has not been confirmed, we’re in no doubt that featuring as Silicon Republic’s Start-up of the Week in May catapulted Wia onto greater things. Or, more likely, its clever time-saving service for developers of IoT devices did the job.
The Wia platform provides developers with a cloud infrastructure for building real-time sensor and location applications.
“Instead of spending months writing code, developers can use our simple APIs to create an application in minutes, requiring no knowledge of the underlying complexity of the infrastructure,” explained Laverty.
To date, NDRC has invested in more than 200 companies and its portfolio has a market cap of over €250m – recent NDRC alumni include Boxever and Soundwave. CEO of NDRC Ben Hurley spoke of the search to find a start-up that could prove it was ready for investment.
“Wia really did that,” he said, “with a compelling solution which further enables IoT, including connectivity and information-sharing between devices and sensors everywhere.”
When speaking to Siliconrepublic.com last month, Laverty’s advice for fellow entrepreneurs was to relax and understand everything can’t be done at once.
“Stop worrying about the tech. I see a lot of people pull hairs out over their ‘CTO dilemma’ before they are even sure about what their business does,” he said.
“A lot of people think an MVP is a technical prototype that they should spend months developing, it is simply a proof of the business model.”
