At the launch of Enterprise Ireland’s latest strategy, we spoke to start-ups that have been supported by this agency’s funding.

Speaking at an event in Voxpro’s Dublin office, Michael FitzGerald, CEO and founder of OnePageCRM, said his company’s journey with Enterprise Ireland started with a €5,000 Innovation Voucher when the product was still just an experiment. Then came €50,000 from the Enterprise Ireland Competitive Start Fund (CSF), which marked a “turning point” in the company.

“We were able to drop everything else we were doing and go focus on OnePageCRM,” he said.

In all, Enterprise Ireland funded 229 start-ups in 2016. Rob Laffan, CEO and founder of TippyTalk, and Denise O’Grady from Way2Pay shared similar CSF success stories at the event, which presented a look back at the previous three years for Enterprise Ireland and mapped a path for the next.

Words by Elaine Burke