Global start-ups seeking Propeller push in Ireland
13 November 2011 by Dick O’Brien
Tom Byrne, chief executive, and Paul Mooney, chief operations officer, HealthComms.
An incubator and mentoring programme for new technology start-ups in Dublin has attracted applications from as far away as Israel, Canada and Rwanda in just its second year in operation.
The DCU Ryan Academy’s Propeller Venture Accelerator Programme has this year received a total of 135 applications for a scheme which provides €30,000 capital investment and a three-month intensive mentoring programme for entrepreneurs. Aside from a healthy number of Irish start-ups, the programme has also received applications from 20 countries, including Germany, Finland, the US, Australia, Iran, India, Israel, South Africa, Brazil, Rwanda and China.
“Last year we had 70 applicants in total,” said Terence Bowden, venture manager at the DCU Ryan Academy. “We have marketed it much more heavily this year, through social media, blogging and so forth”.
Bowden said that a key factor in almost doubling applications was that it was now ranked seventh in Europe in an independent study of accelerator programmes commissioned by the Kauffman Fellows Programme. “The foundation is one of the big entrepreneurial academies in the world, and that helped push a lot of international people to us that probably previously wouldn’t have heard of us,” he said.
The chosen companies from this year’s crop will enter the Propeller offices on January 2, 2012, and will be met by over 60 mentors whose goal will be to guide and advise them in getting their businesses off the ground.
“Some of these people would come in with an idea that is drawn on the back of a beer mat,” Bowden said. “We are taking on people at a very early stage. By the end of the programme, on our investor demo day, we would expect that they should have a prototype that the they can show to investors and use to sell the product.
“They should be able to demonstrate some traction, to be able to show the product works. Last year, we had one company that had raised €200,000 even before the demo day.”
The DCU Ryan Academy is now narrowing down the applicants to a shortlist of 30, and they will begin meeting them next week. Bowden stressed that the application process was two-way and that even the start-ups who weren’t accepted should get something out of it.
“The way we see it is that we want to give something back to them,” he said. “It is not a case of their presenting to us and we just walk away. We want to get back to them and give them as much feedback as we can. The academy is there to promote entrepreneurship and innovation.
“We are there to help them in any way we can. The following week after that we have mentors and investors coming in who will give them ideas on what to do going forward.”
The final step of the process is when the shortlisted firms go before Declan Ryan and some of his colleagues from Irelandia Investments, after which the final selection will be made.
While six companies went through the programme this year, Bowden said that the number wasn’t fixed. The programme has a capacity of ten, but he said the final selection could be as low as five. “What we look for is quality, not quantity,” he said. “We believe in the principle of failing fast.
“If the idea isn’t good, you should drop it and move on to another project.”
Among the companies graduating from the first programme was HealthComms. The Dublin-based software company specialises in developing products facilitating in-home care for ageing populations. It has development software that makes it easier for older people at home to manage their communications with their care network, via two-way visual communication.
HealthComms founder and chief executive Tom Byrne said that the main impact of the programme was to focus the firm’s efforts. “A key enabler for HealthComms was the access to the mentors and their willingness to contribute their own time, but also to connect us with their respective networks,” he said.
The company is now in beta stage with its product and it is being used in Ireland by charity Caring for Carers and Telehealth company Tunstall Emergency Response. The firm is also working on a project with the emergency response services on Corsica, to tailor the system for the French island’s requirements.
Another firm among this year’s crop was GreenEgg Technologies. The company was formed in 2010 as a spinout from the Energy and Design Lab in Dublin City University.
GreenEgg is focused on developing products for the green technology sector, in particular the field of energy management. The firm has gone from employing two people when it started in the Propeller programme to five today.
At this stage, a prototype of the company’s primary product is almost completed and there are plans to adapt it to a number of different markets. The firm has already sourced equity investment from Enterprise Ireland and a number of private investors.
“Our company was just founded with no previous start-up experience and changed dramatically over the course of the programme,” said Rob Merriman, co-founder and director of business development. “Propeller greatly helped with securing funding.”
Also on the programme was VendorShop, which markets itself as a social e-commerce company. The company’s software allows businesses to start selling their products from their Facebook pages.
VendorShop entered the programme with just two employees, its founders, Chris Small and Tony Casey. The firm now employs four people, with plans to increase that to seven in the next six weeks.
“Propeller gave us the confidence to turn VendorShop from a part-time enterprise, worked on in the evenings and weekend, to a full-time company,” said Small. “The process and mentoring meant we were constantly looking at our business model to refine it.”
