Start-up Central

NEWS, VIEWS AND PROFILES ON THE LATEST START-UPS IN IRELAND

63%

of companies feel Ireland is a better place to start a business than five years ago, according to early responses to the TechIreland Innovation Island Pulse 2022 survey.

HOW IT ALL STARTED

CHARLIE GLEESON,

CEO AND FOUNDER, ZIPP MOBILITY

How have you funded the business to date?

We have raised over €2.1m from private individuals/angel investors, a venture capital fund, Enterprise Ireland, as well as a crowdfunding campaign run through the Spark platform. What’s the best advice you have been given?

To be patient. It is a long time from ideation to actually launching. Patience is key to make sure you’re making the right long-term decisions for the business. What was the most important lesson you learned starting out?

I’ve certainly had to learn to delegate. There has been great learning in hiring a team that complements my own strengths and weaknesses. Your biggest make or break moment?

Winning our very first licence in the UK’s scooter-sharing trials in 2020 was a huge moment for the business. It legitimised the early work we had done to build our vision of ‘mobility done right’ and enabled us to convince councils to choose us over our much larger incumbent competitors. Is there anything you would change in hindsight?

I would have started thinking bigger, earlier. We only looked internationally when university campuses, where we had secured our very first trials, closed due to the pandemic. Now that we’ve launched internationally, our confidence in our ability to scale is much higher. Company: Zipp Mobility, founded in 2019 Location: NovaUCD, Belfield Innovation Park, Dublin Product: Ireland’s leading micromobility provider Staff: 25

Website: https://www.zippmobility.com/

NEW €90M FUND FOR EARLY-STAGE START-UPS

The Government has launched a new €90m fund for Irish start-ups, prioritising areas such as climate change and female entrepreneurship. The Irish Innovation Seed Fund Programme will provide capital to innovative Irish companies at the seed stage. It brings together three partners, each allocating up to €30m – the European Investment Fund, Enterprise Ireland and the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund participating as a coinvestor. “We’re looking for companies working in a number of areas we’ve identified as strategic opportunities for Ireland but have traditionally struggled in attracting earlystage investment,” said An Tánaiste Leo Varadkar.

INTEREST RISING IN ANGEL INVESTMENT

Halo Business Angel Network (HBAN) business angels have invested an average of €200,000 each in start-ups on the island of Ireland, with the majority preferring to invest as part of a syndicate, rather than alone. The survey of 114 HBAN investors revealed that the average angel has invested in 6.3 companies and the industries that attracted the largest number of angel investors in the past 12 months were ICT, fintech, medtech and life sciences. Angels will continue their interest in these sectors this year, while also considering sectors including engineering, manufacturing and electronics; food, beverages and agriculture; and business services.

Raymond Heneghan, CEO and Co-founder, Izario; Jack Cotter and Nick Cotter, Co-founders, Cotter Agritech and Dr Jerome O’Connell, MD and Co-founder, ProvEye

First crop of UCD agritech winners

Cotter Agritech, ProvEye and Izario were announced as the winners of the inaugural AgTechUCD Accelerator Programme in January, scooping the titles of AgTech Start-up 2022, Most Innovative AgTech Start-up 2022 and One to Watch 2022, respectively. A Limerick-based start-up, Cotter Agritech was founded by brothers Jack and Nick Cotter with a vision of dramatically reducing chemical use in agriculture while improving productivity and profitability. UCD spin-out ProvEye uses first-to-market intellectual property to process and analyse UAV and satellite imagery to obtain insights into the e iciency and sustainability of the agricultural industry. Meanwhile, Izario has developed an autonomous robot that operates in broiler-breeder and commercial egg-laying hen barns. Founded in 2019 by Paul McCarthy, Snapfix has developed a maintenance platform “as simple to use as WhatsApp”, allowing users to share photos and messages relating to tasks to be completed and issues to be resolved. The software solution is being used as in various settings, including hotels and manufacturing facilities. “The management and maintenance of buildings is a massive global problem, with many still using old and ine icient solutions, including pen and paper. Snapfix is mobile-first, with a relentless focus on simplicity, instantly turning every building into a ‘smart building,” says McCarthy. Snapfix recently secured €1.75m in funding, backed by US investment group Sator Grove Holdings. The investment will be used for further technical development and international expansion, particularly in the UK and US where progress has already been made. “Over time, we believe the reach of the company and its products is almost limitless,” says Paul Buser, Co-Founder and CoCEO of Sator Grove Holdings.

Equal1 in acceleration mode

Chief Operating O icer of Equal1 Laboratories (Equal1) Jason Lynch has been promoted to Chief Executive O icer of the company so that Co-founder Dr Dirk Leipold can focus on accelerating development of its quantumenhanced processor technology in the role of President. With research and development teams based at NovaUCD in Dublin and Silicon Valley, California, Equal1 has secured a total of €20m investment to date through the European Innovation Council and a venture capital funding round. Leipold founded Equal1 with Mike Asker and Prof Robert Bogdan Staszewski as a spin-out from University College Dublin with the aim of addressing a major challenge for the quantum computing industry: to scale the number of qubits so that a quantum computer can tackle real-world problems.

Prof Robert Bogdan Staszewski and Dr Dirk Leipold, Co-founders, Equal1 Paul McCarthy, Founder, Snapfix

NE TO WATCH: SNAPFIX

Creating a Seamless and Secure Technology Environment

Facing up to the challenge of the new hybrid working model, Cisco Meraki technologies allow staff to do their jobs securely from the office or at home, writes Jack Michelmore.

Business leaders in 2022 are faced with the enormous challenge of making sure that staff can do their jobs safely, and securely, from either the office or at home. According to one survey, only 11% of businesses expect to have all staff back to the office on a full-time basis; this means IT leaders need to create a technology environment for staff that is seamless and secure on a network infrastructure which is ready for the next challenge.

While there are many benefits to adopting a hybrid work model— including improved employee satisfaction, the opportunity to employ a more diverse team, easier to recruit and retain staff, reduced real estate costs and enhanced productivity—there are also challenges associated with this new way of working.

HYBRID CHALLENGES The key challenges for technology leaders to keep in mind when making decisions around hybrid work include: network security and cybersecurity, maintaining company culture, onboarding new team members, upgrading and updating applications, and technical support.

Increasingly business users want the same procedures and tools to access networks and data, wherever they are. They want to choose their devices and require them to connect quickly and effectively to corporate networks, assets, and authorised partners. It is the responsibility of leadership to deliver these capabilities and more.

KEY FEATURES To meet these requirements, Cisco Meraki technologies offer a number of key features and advantages. With Rapid-Fire Security, configuring and connecting Meraki VPNs takes mere seconds. Recognising the popularity of ‘bring your own device’ (BYOD) policies in the workplace, Cisco Meraki technologies make it simple to provision, monitor, and secure devices via one intuitive dashboard. Real-Time monitoring provides visibility and transparency across the network and devices while advanced analytics deliver actionable insight into business-critical applications and network links. It also offers native integration for service management and trouble tickets, which boosts productivity. Secure Next-Generation Wi-Fi ensures all touchpoints get online quickly and easily. Open APIs allow an ecosystem of partners to develop applications for vertical and horizontal use-cases.

When thinking specifically about returning to the corporate

Jack Michelmore, Territory Account Manager, Cisco Meraki

office, it’s imperative businesses question how the use of their network and physical spaces will differ drastically compared to prepandemic. It’s crucial now that high performing and secure connectivity is available to everyone, particularly with the increased use of conference calling platforms. This requires the assessment of physical spaces to expand available hot desks and rooms for hybrid workers. It’s also equally as important to combine onpremises and cloud security systems to enable responses to intruders and cyber security threats.

PRODUCT PORTFOLIO As a full stack vendor, Cisco Meraki can help businesses achieve all of these objectives with our expansive product portfolio:

● Cisco Meraki Wi-Fi6 Access

Points: Next generation Wi-Fi6 access points are key to managing all the demands hybrid workers will put on your wireless network. ● Cisco Meraki Next Generation

Firewalls: Ensure end-to-end security via VPN and access

Cisco’s industry leading security services. ● Cisco Meraki Smart IOT Devices:

Creating smart spaces with

MV cameras and MT environmental sensors.

For nearly two years IT leaders have had to ensure their colleagues can work efficiently and securely from home. Now with staff beginning to return to the office, there is the additional difficulty of enabling people to work seamlessly both in the office and from home from one day to the next. This creates myriad challenges, particularly providing complete connectivity and coverage for multiple locations and devices, finding alternatives to on-site onboarding procedures for new employees, and overcoming the complexity of integrating physical and network security.

Cisco Meraki also has a range of products which addresses these specific challenges:

● Cisco Meraki Z3 Teleworker

Device: Optimise connectivity and deliver to experiences of next-gen Wi-FI with the Z3 teleworker gateway. ● Cisco Meraki Systems Manager:

Securing devices and data at scale while also accelerating onboarding by automating provisioning. ● Cisco Meraki Insight:

Gain complete transparency across your network performance.

There are many considerations for business leaders around hybrid work, and each organisation will have their own unique requirements. Cisco Meraki’s full stack, intuitive platform is the foundation that can allow businesses of all sizes to create and support productive hybrid workforces at scale.

WITH STAFF BEGINNING TO RETURN TO THE OFFICE, THERE IS THE ADDITIONAL DIFFICULTY OF ENABLING PEOPLE TO WORK SEAMLESSLY BOTH IN THE OFFICE AND FROM HOME FROM ONE DAY TO THE NEXT.

For more useful information make sure you check out Cisco Meraki’s excellent Hybrid Workforce Guide here and the company’s equally excellent remote work resources at meraki.cisco.com/remotework-resources/ For enquiries email: ireland.Cisco@exertis.com

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