Start-up Central

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

€140m

A new fund from Irish firm Act Venture Capital, which intends to back about 35 early-stage tech companies.

HOW IT ALL STARTED Aidan Finn

CEO, BINARII LABS

How have you funded the business to date?

We have raised US$1.6m so far between Irish, UK and US-based angel investors to support the launch of our solutions focused on making blockchain relevant for business. What’s the best advice you have been given?

If you hold o on taking action until you have the perfect plan, you will never be very active! What was the most important lesson you learned starting out?

Starting out is the easy, exciting and exhilarating bit. I learned quickly that the demanding work and real test of will comes with sticking at it. Your biggest make or break moment?

My wife Iarla Dunphy has put in an extraordinary amount of work over the past nine years across di erent initiatives that made Binarii possible. Knowing I had her full support was a genuine make or break moment. Is there anything you would change in hindsight?

I would have taken the leap an awful lot sooner. Company: Binarii Labs, founded in September 2021 Location: Kildare and NovaUCD, Dublin. Soon to add Singapore, California and London Product: B2B SaaS solutions that utilise blockchain as an integral part of their design to both protect and create e iciencies for enterprise Sta : 10

WORKOS ACQUIRES FOUR-YEAR OLD MODULZ

Dublin start-up Modulz has been acquired by San Francisco-based WorkOS, a platform for developers building enterprise software, for an undisclosed sum. Colm Tuite and Stephen Hanley set up Modulz four years ago to fix the disconnect between digital product teams. They created Radix and Stitches, two very successful opensource projects supported by a thriving community. With this acquisition, the Modulz team has joined WorkOS to help developers build apps faster and ship enterprise features e ortlessly, according to a WorkOS statement.

IBM SUPPORTING IRISH COMPANIES

Enterprise Ireland and IBM are collaborating to provide Irish high-potential start-up and scale-up companies with resources, tools and technology to help them expand internationally. The IBM OpenXChange programme is designed to complement and enrich IBM’s start-up and build partner programmes. The OpenXChange team will design and execute bespoke partnership strategies towards common growth and success objectives with these Irish companies. “Ensuring that Irish companies can access the cutting-edge technology of leading multinationals based in Ireland gives our start-up companies a competitive edge in global markets,” said Jenny Melia, Division Manager at Enterprise Ireland.

PlasmaBound Co-founders Alan Barry, Dr James Nicholas Barry and Xavier Montibert

PlasmaBound completes €2.35m funding round

University College Dublin spin-out PlasmaBound has completed a €2.35m funding round, led by Act Venture Capital and supported by the Atlantic Bridge University Fund, Enterprise Ireland and a number of private investors. Founded in 2017, the start-up’s goal is for sustainable lightweight materials to be a standard feature on vehicles, devices and structures globally. Its controlled polymer ablation technology is attracting significant interest in several sectors. “Our technology is about getting more renewable, lightweight materials into use faster as we seek a more sustainable carbon-reduced future,” said CEO Alan Barry. “Right now this is limited by cost and complexity to only high-tech applications, or premium price points, with limited real environmental impact. Pushing recyclable composites into mainstream mass-production will move the dial on all our e orts for a sustainable tomorrow.” FenuHealth, which is based in Co Meath, produces powdered supplements that are added to feed to help prevent and resolve stomach problems in horses and ponies. Its Co-founder, University College Cork student Annie Madden, won Enterprise Ireland’s 2022 Student Entrepreneur of the Year Award on 10 June. The business was built on work done by sisters Annie and Kate Madden as Transition Year students taking part in the BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition in 2015. FenuHealth currently o ers a range of nine products and exports to 15 countries as well as counting five royal families among its customers. One of ten finalists at the Student Enterprise Awards, FenuHealth got €10,000 as part of the prize. The Madden sisters, who were named among top ‘teen CEOs’ in 2018, will also receive mentoring from Enterprise Ireland to develop the commercial viability of their products.

Ecosystem thriving in Cork

CorkBIC has released figures which show that the Halo Business Angel Network’s Boole Syndicate, based in Cork, invested €2.3m in start-ups last year, up 52% on the previous year. With 52 active members (up 24% on 2020), the Boole Syndicate has invested around €11.5m in Irish start-ups since 2013. In May, CorkBIC hosted Europe’s largest international private investment and entrepreneurship gathering, the EBAN Congress 2022. “Cork’s economy is thriving and that is reflected in the start-up ecosystem. Some of the world’s biggest companies are based in Cork, creating a talent pool for start-ups and a knowledge pool of angel investors who can share their expertise with entrepreneurs. As a result, angel investment in Cork is continuing to grow year-on-year,” said Michael O’Connor, CEO, CorkBIC.

Michael O’Connor, CEO, CorkBIC Annie Madden, Co-founder, FenuHealth