27th of October 2009 by admin
As part of a project we’re evaluating with some mobile companies, we’d like to get some feedback/insight around Mobile Application Development in Ireland – appreciate if folks would take our very short survey
Mary Meeker, from Morgan Stanley, presented recently at Web2Summit – in summary Mobile is exploding
27th of October 2009 by admin
The Irish Times has a piece on Realex Payments – and their plans for global expansion.
Led by Colm Lyon (who is also the key man behind Alliance/IGAP), Realex are hitting some great numbers.
- YTD Realex has processed over €6 billion in transactions
- €726 million in payments processed in September alone
- 3,500 clients
- Tier 1 clients like Virgin Atlantic, Vodafone and Aer Lingus
- Turnover of €6.47 million in the year ending April 2009 (12% up on 2008)
- €721,000 in profits – with more than €2.5 million of accumulated profits.
- seeking to recruit a further 15 people – team is at 70 already
26th of October 2009 by admin
The Sunday Times reported that Web Reservations International (WRI), owner of the Hostelworld.com and boo.com, were planning to sell for £275m after hiring investment bank Morgan Stanley to manage the process.
Potentially nice pay day for Ray Nolan, Tom Kennedy, Paddy Holohan and Paul McGuinness
20th of October 2009 by admin
The winners at the recent Smartcamp Final in Dublin were
Treemetrics – A Forestry Management Company are the overall SmartCamp winner. They will receive a three month mentorship program with IBM to help them build an 'investor ready' proposition. They also receive entry into the NDRC program with also includes funding of up to €25,000.
HeyStacks – a social search company also received entry into the NDRC program
Green Diamond – An Energy Efficiency Management Company won the Vodafone mentorship and and investment offer from AIB Seed Capital Fund will €50,000 .
ResourceKraft also received an investment offer from AIB Seed Capital for the same amount – both of these are subject to normal diligence.
Congratulations to all the winners, and also to Martin Kelly and his colleagues at IBM Ireland for a great event.
14th of October 2009 by admin
The Final 5 companies for Smartcamp have been selected
SmartCamp day will take place on the 15th Oct in Dublin.
The NDRC will select 1 of the 5 SmartCamp finalists to enter its new 3 month programme, which includes funding of 25k, to focus on commercial validation of web and mobile proposals.
UPDATE
In addition to NDRC Grant,
- IBM is offering the winning candidate of their choice, a three month mentorship course at its Dublin Innovation Centre to help them build an 'investor ready' commercial proposition in order to secure funding.
- Vodafone will offer a 3 month mentorship course to a candidate of their choice.
- AIB Seed Capital Fund will make an offer of investment of €50,000 to each of two candidates of their choice subject to normal diligence.
Companies
1. Cloudsplit Dynamic Infrastructure Analysis
CloudSplit offer a real time view on what is happening on your Amazon grid from a cost perspective
2. Green DiamondWaste Management
Green Diamond provide cost-efficient green solutions for the environmental industry
3. Heystacks–Social Search
HeyStaks helps you and your friends to benefit from each other’s search experiences.
4. ResourceKraft-Energy Effiecency/management
ResourceKraft supply highly sophisticated energy cost control systems – saving money and carbon
5. TreeMetrics-Forestry Management
Treemetrics optimise value recovery in forestry
12th of October 2009 by admin
13 Enterprise Ireland supported companies recently attended CTIA Wireless event in the US
Companies attending
Accuris
Altobridge
BitRabbit
Dial2Do
dotMobi
MobileAware
NewBay
Openet
Tango
Taoglas
VistaTec
Zamano
Some Highlights
Dial2Do nominated for Mobile Excellence Awards
NewBay, the leader in digital lifestyle solutions for carriers, announced that over 10 million subscribers are now using its award-winning LifeCache Social Networking solution and also announced LifeCache Smart Address Book (SAB) 2.0, a converged, telco-grade social address book offering for carriers. LifeCache SAB is a white-label address book that syncs, merges and updates contacts and dynamic content from multiple sources and stores the data securely in the cloud
Taoglas has announced the first LTE and WiMax antennas for telematics, mobile, telemedical and security markets. The antennas will benefit M2M manufacturers developing LTE and WiMax prototypes for new fourth generation networks
1st of October 2009 by admin
Our roving Web2Ireland reporters popped down to Trinity College on Tuesday for the cmypitch event
An excellent event, with 10 start-ups pitching in front of 5 Dragons and a room full of investors, with short snappy 4 minute pitches were the order of the day followed by 4 minutes grilling from the Dragons.
The dragons were
- James Carroll of Investor First
- the very well known Brian Caulfield
- Maurice Roche of Delta Partners
- but the real stars were Pat Brazal and Eamonn Fallon who were invariably spot on with their feedback.
Getting successful entrepreneurs like these as angel investors in your start-up is one sure fire recipe for success. Kudos also to Maurice Roche who led very admirably from the VC angle. It was good to see the most active house in town, Delta, participating.
On to the start-ups which included some overseas entrants, which we think is a good idea as home grown talent needs to know there’s much competition out there for those investment dollars.
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Event Elephant offers online tools to make organising conferences easier. Eamon O’Brien started out with a very text based pitch but kept the best wine till last with great product shots towards the end.
Sentry Wireless gave a great pitch focused on their SMS spam guard for the Asian market with some great partners, including Acision, lined up. A very polished performance from Matt Norton.
Soko Health led with a video pitch, which works well for one person at a PC but not for a room full of investors who come to hear you and not a recording. Product become much clearer with Dragon questioning which Aidan McKenna handled admirably.
Learn 2 Lingo led by Shira Rubin is an online web cam based language school that focuses on partnering (not competing) with their bricks & mortar language school brethren. They have also inked some large corporate deals, notably with Lonely Planet and Lovells. Dragons seemed to get tripped up here on scaling, but we thought this was the best pitch of the night. Suspect they need to meet the Hostel World guys?
Intelligent Comms presented their Telecom Expense Management Platform for large corporates. Walter Tyser led on this one.
Eplixo offer video conferencing on the mobile via premium SMS pricing. Gerard Brandon battled hard with the dragons to assure them background mobile noise/reception was not a usability issue.
Rocudo presented their online re-mix solution to release the inner DJ in you. Chicken and egg scenario loomed large here but Culann MacCabe batted well on that score.
Headway Software announced the second coming of their code base management solution. Chris Chedgey was very confident that this time around, they had a winner.
Simchronise presented on their solution for mobile back-up again focused on the Asian market. David Inglis and the team have much sector experience, so one to watch.
Alan Mulcahy closed with Spirit of Ireland, and thankfully declared upfront that they are not looking for investment at this time, as their needs are great – need €9 billion to flood the Ring Of Kerry and make one giant Hydro Electric plant with a bit of wind power thrown in too!
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Dragons in the end voted Event Elephant as the most investable, so congratulations to Eamon O’Brien and his team.
Entrepreneurs, get you to cmypitch.ie and upload your pitch.
Best of luck to Emmet Kilduff and team as their stated objective of getting more angel investors participating in the Irish market is one which we whole heartily support.
1st of October 2009 by admin
Our own Anton Mannering (from Hat Media), has kindly provided us with some discount tickets for the upcoming Audience Conference in New York
Audience is a conference aimed at those who recognise the need to reach engage and influence audiences of all kinds, an investigation into how this is changing, and a look at how technology has in the past and is now, through new media tools and the social web, changing audience participation and interaction.
The speakers range from large traditional media organisations with Dan Farber of CBS, though the recording industry with Warner Bros. Music CTO Ethan Kaplan, advertising with Crayon's Joe Jaffe, HR and internal audiences with Frank Roche of iFractal and new media players like Mike Arrington of TechCrunch and Jason Calacanis of Mahalo, not to mention Musicians like Mike Watt and the inimitable Andrew Keen of Cult of the Amateur fame with more being added all the time.
Engaging on November 6th in the Hudson Theatre, one of New York's oldest playhouses with a capacity of only 500, this will be an intimate gathering of fine minds in Manhattan. We felt it was appropriate to hold a conference that was about Audience in a place that was specifically designed for it and recently restored to it's original beauty
The discount code for web2ireland readers is web2ire.
25th of September 2009 by admin
Quick reminder on the Facebook Garage Belfast.
The event is on Monday, October 12, 2009 from 3:00 PM at The Black Box, Hill St, Belfast
Andy McMillan (twitter:goodonpaper) is the local hosting/organizing the event, with great support from Elaine Thompson at InvestNI
If you're interested in attending, participating, talking, etc please sign up and check the Facebook Page
25th of September 2009 by admin
dbTwang – the web's favourite community for those who share a passion for guitars – has just closed its seed round, and also welcomes the participation of Colm Lyon (of Realex Payments) in the round.
This brings to 200k the seed round in dbTwang.
The Irish Times has more information, as well as the founders blog.
Congratulation to Keith and team.
