Web 2 Ireland

DataHug didn’t just win at the Dublin Web Summit recently, they also nabbed the Emerging category in the Munster region for the All-Ireland Seedcorn competition this week. This is one of the biggest start-up competitions on the island and I think we can expect great things from the guys in the final.

I shot over a few question to Ray and Connor about the company, their backgrounds and the product.

How long have you been around?
Since November 2009

Is this your first startup?
J1Summer.com was founded by Connor back in 2002.

What are your backgrounds
Ray: Over 6 years global experience as a Manager working for Accenture, in architecting and delivering large scale technology business critical technology projects. Deep experience in planning, estimating and managing large geographically dispersed development teams (50+). Electronic Engineer who placed top of his class (UCD) and went on to complete a research Masters involving MIT Media Lab

Connor: Over 6 years at PA Consulting, Connor sold and delivered million dollar projects for Thomson Reuters, Pfizer, Estee Lauder, British Airways and Dubai World. Diverse experience working for global leading clients with a speciality in Knowledge Management and User-Centric design. He has a first Class honours degree from Computer Science (UCC)

You seem to be not just in Ireland? US too?
Connor lived in Washington DC for a number of years and I lived down in Australia. The company has a base in DC and connections in San Jose but we came home to be based here in Ireland and we plan to grow the company in Ireland initially.

Did we hear there was a Cork connection?
Connor is the official company langer J, with me being from Dublin. My fiancée is from Cork so I am not your typical Barry's tea knocking jackeen.

Any background in Webapps or coming at it from biz opportunity side?
With our technical backgrounds, we both have developed web applications in the past. We spotted the business opportunity whilst working in Consulting and lived the pain of managing relationships every day. We were then fortunate to be able to develop it ourselves and bootstrap it in the current climate.

Any immediate results from DWS4?
We have trial partners in the States, UK and Ireland who are providing us with alpha feedback in advance of our public beta launch. A lot of positives have been taken from that and the number wishing to sign-up for our beta trial.

How are you currently funded?
Bootstrapped to-date with support from Endeavour (Jerry Kennelly), EI and the iGAP programme. The Spark of Genius prize will go a long way to helping us grow at pace. We are currently actively looking to close a seed investment round.

Numbers of alpha testers?
We have 6 trial clients, clocking up over a million relationships through the system.

Beta this month?
Planned for the end of this month.

Anything you can share on the tech?
Cloud SaaS Solution, built on MS Azure platform. Supports IMAP, Google OAuth and Exchange Web Services connectivity

Pure Enterprise play or other angles you are looking at?
We are initially targeting SME business between 5 500 employees involved in professional services or sales. We will then target the larger professional services firms.

Initial target geography?
Ireland, UK, US in that order.

One-liner on #DWS4 and F.ounders?
The Dublin Web Summit & F.ounders was yet another fantastic event organised by Paddy Cosgrave to help put Ireland on the map for web technologies and start-ups. The line-up of speakers were fantastic

It’s that time of year again where start-ups all over the island are busy tweaking their business plans for the Seedcorn competition. There is still enough time if you start now and you’re missing out on a big opportunity if you don’t. There is €360,000 in prizes up for grabs.

Do you meet the following criteria?

• In the seed, startup or early stages of business development
• Incorporated on the island of Ireland
• Not more than 5 years old at Friday 25 September 2009
• Have a new equity requirement of at least €100,000 (or sterling equivalent)
• Have cumulative sales targets of less than or in excess of €5m by year 3,4 or 5

Deadline is 1PM FRIDAY 25TH SEPTEMBER 2009

This came as a shock to me last night when I went to check the closing time for Seedcorn applications. The deadline is not close-of-business, it is 1pm! So if you are doing any last minute edits, hurry up.

And good luck.

The deadline for the all-island SeedCorn competition might seem far away but considering you have to deliver a full Biz plan, it isn’t really.

The first step is to register your interest which just takes a minute. They then send you a link to a guide and to the upload URL for your biz plan.

Deadline for final delivery of Plan is September 26th.

The total prize fund is €280,000 and the prizes are as follows:

• €100,000 for overall Emerging International Company
• €50,000 for overall Emerging Company
• 3 x €20,000 for regional Emerging International Companies
• 3 x €20,000 for regional Emerging Companies
• €10,000 for best venture stemming from a university spin-out or platform programme

Send on any news tips to us at web2ireland.editor AT gmail.com

. MUZU TV – Dublin based startup just launches [Thanks Joe for note]. From their site “Your Music Network – Where bands, artists, festivals, venues, broadcasters, music magazines and more broadcast their music TV on the web.”

Techcrunch meetup – some updates from Mike Butcher on Thursday.

PutPlace gets some readwriteweb love – on their Public beta

Maxroam drives lower phone call prices – and gets ready to launch version2.0

TripPlanr from Jan and his team at TouristRepublic – get coverage on SiliconRepublic – in partnership with Deri – good example of co-operation with research institutes in Ireland.

Pitch Robin Klein – from TAG - see video with Loic

Interesting mobile social service – Locle – especially given latest m&a activity @ plazes and zyb. Rumour has it that a well know telecoms disruptor is an advisor.

SeedCorn Competition – has a record prize fund of €280,000 – which makes some other global startup competitions look small in comparison.

Events – Salesforce mashup/developer/platform event in Dublin – Tour De Force – June 30th

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