15 Irish businesses make it through to Voom 2016 pitchathon

15 Irish businesses that entered the Virgin Media Voom 2016 competition have made it past the first hurdle and into the pitchathon part of the competition, where they’ll compete against 145 other companies.

Voom 2016 was the first in a revamped SME competition from Virgin Media, which this year included Irish companies for the first time, with €1.2m in prizes up for grabs.

12 Irish business were recently featured on Siliconrepublic.com as the ones that had made it into the top 80 at that point, with two of them featuring in the top 10.

Leading the pack in this shortlist was the Boeing 767 Transport-Themed Glamping Village, which recently towed a jet all the way along Ireland’s Atlantic western coast to Enniscrone in Sligo.

The 15 Irish businesses selected will now take part in a world-record 29-hour, live-streamed pitchathon on 1 and 2 June, where businesses will pitch back-to-back to a panel of expert judges.

Spread over two categories

At this point, the judges will whittle down the 160 businesses to just 40 semi-finalists, which could go on to pitch to Richard Branson and international business heavyweights Tyra Banks, Sara Blakely and Marcus Butler, in the Voom 2016 grand finale on 28 June.

Eight Irish companies are represented in the ‘Start-up’ category, with seven in the ‘Grow’ category.

The ‘Start-up’ category is for fresh and exciting businesses that are still in the early stages of development, while the ‘Grow’ competition is for businesses that are already recording revenues but are looking to ramp things up.

So, without further ado, here are the 15 companies that will be getting down to business at the beginning of next month.

Richard Branson image via Shutterstock

Updated 5.15pm, 25 May 2015: An earlier version of this article mistakenly said 14 companies had made it through to the pitchathon – we’re happy to report it is in fact 15.