Start-up supports have taken some of the weight off Emma Meehan’s entrepreneurial load. Meehan, a computer scientist and competitive weightlifter, is the founder of Precision Sports Technology, which combines both interests.
Her company’s app gives coaches and physiotherapists real-time feedback about their clients’ exercise techniques, through an iPhone or iPad.
Meehan had the idea as part of her final-year project in college and continued to toy with it while working as a software engineer at Cisco for three years.
It was only when she signed up to a pre-accelerator programme run by the National Digital Research Centre (NDRC) last year that the business powered ahead. “I initially thought of developing the product as a smart mirror to sell into gyms but it changed to an app for coaches and physios so the pre-accelerator honed the product and the pitch,” she says.
Meehan has maintained the momentum, taking part in an Austrian accelerator, Hummelnest, which netted her €100,000 in funding. She has also secured €80,000 in private investment.
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Having signed up teams in the NFL and Premier League she hopes to raise pre-seed funding of €600,000 this year, to scale up. “We have a team in place and want to hit the ground running in the new year,” Meehan says.
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In the meantime she hopes to secure a place on the NDRC start-up accelerator programme. Not only does it come with €100,000 in funding, but it “opens doors to investors”, she says.
Getting selected is no picnic. The accelerator is open to technology start-ups in any sector, but fewer than 4 per cent of applicants make the cut.
“The first thing we look at is the team,” Lorraine Curham, the accelerator’s programme manager, says. “Who are the people behind the idea and what makes them unique? Most ideas are not unique, so we want to see what it is about this founding team that will make them go the distance where others have failed.”
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Potential market opportunity is next. “We want to see the possibility of billions or trillions in revenues. It has to be a globally scalable tech business that can tackle all markets,” she adds.
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Finally, it looks at how quickly a business has progressed, whether engaging in trials or winning customers and experiencing revenue growth. “We look at both your traction and your velocity to date,” Curham says.
For most businesses the country’s biggest start-up programme is New Frontiers, run by Enterprise Ireland and delivered by third-level institutions in 18 locations across the country.
There are three phases, with the first one taking place remotely online — a Covid innovation that has stuck. That enables people to work on their idea while keeping their day job, according to Paula Carroll, Enterprise Ireland’s New Frontiers national programme manager. There is no funding for the first phase.
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Phase two takes place in person and participants receive a tax-free stipend of €15,000 for the six-month programme. That enables them to give up the day job and focus on the start-up full-time.
A third phase is also available, providing an additional three months of support and a further €7,000 stipend.
New Frontiers is not an accelerator, but an enterprise development programme, Carroll says. “Its primary objective is to develop the confidence and expertise of the founder.”
About 500 people participate in phase one of New Frontiers every year and 170 go on to do phase two, while 34 on average do phase three. No equity is taken by Enterprise Ireland in the businesses.
“The only objective we have is for the individual to succeed,” Carroll says. Of those who proceed with their business, some will move on to the local enterprise office network for grant assistance and mentoring. Others will become Enterprise Ireland’s high-potential start-ups, while others will continue to bootstrap, or apply to join an accelerator such as the one run by NDRC. “It’s not linear and it’s not the same for everybody,” Carroll says.
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The launch last year of Enterprise Ireland’s Pre-Seed Start Fund (PSSF) is helping, providing up to €100,000 to successful candidates. It replaced the state agency’s Competitive Start Fund (CSF), doubling the funding available and staying open to applicants all year round, unlike the CSF, which worked on the basis of calls. “PSSF has generated a lot of excitement because it is a significant amount of money for people at that very early stage,” Carroll says.
It has also attracted attention from investors such as Growing Capital, an early-stage investment specialist that has to date supported more than 20 Irish start-ups, including notable successes such as Flipdish, Glofox and Siren.
“The PSSF mitigates overall risk by offering the early-stage start-up both financial capital and the assistance of a dedicated [Enterprise Ireland] development adviser,” Gianni Matera, Growing Capital’s founder, says.
He has established a vehicle called PSSF Booster, which provides matching funds to selected PSSF recipients, raising the total pre-seed round to €200,000. Matera plans to make five such PSSF Booster investments this year and ten in 2024. He also tracks companies coming through the NDRC, the Business Innovation Centres’ Prep4 Seed programme and teams participating in Science Foundation Ireland’s Challenges, all of which provides a seed bed for early-stage investment opportunities.
The first recipient of Growing Capital’s PSSF Booster is Nipun Kathuria of Smile Genius Dental, a developer of software that connects dentists to suppliers and patients, providing one platform to replace what is currently several. Kathuria is a recent graduate of TU Dublin’s New Frontiers programme and already has customers in the UK, the US and the United Arab Emirates, his target markets.
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As well as participating in the NDRC pre-accelerator, he secured a place on the AWS Startup Loft, an accelerator run by Amazon Web Services, which was worth €25,000 in digital services.
Clare Meskill, a speech and language therapist, took a different route, starting at Ignite, an incubation programme run by University College Cork. She is now finishing up on the NDRC accelerator programme. Her business, Teleatherapy, allows speech and language therapists to monitor client exercises remotely. It helps address a global shortage of therapists and should cut waiting times for speech and language therapy significantly in both the HSE and Britain’s NHS.
Meskill has raised pre-seed funding of €700,000 and will use her next round to launch in America. The company easily cleared its regulatory and clinical hurdles, with “commercialisation happening faster than we anticipated”, she says.
The NDRC accelerator is providing her with the skillsets to keep up. “I’m learning all the time and developing as a founder,” Meskill says. “NDRC really has accelerated our progress.”
