“Shortly after I won the BT Young Scientist, we raised a pre-seed of $1.25m (€1.1m) with Frontline as our primary investor, followed by Seedcamp and Act. Our main focus is hiring cool people to build crazy sh*t, crazy fast,” says Tarr.

Previously, he had been contracted to build a computer vision AI platform for an LA media company that would be scalable to millions of videos a day.

“I found I spent the bulk of my time optimising deployment rather than on the AI itself due to a lack of adequate infrastructure,” he says.
Inferex automates this process to “allow data scientists to focus on what they are best at – AI”.

ELLIOT HUGHES (28)
Dingle Distillery
Elliot Hughes was young when his late father Oliver, who co-founded the craft brewery and pub chain Porterhouse Group, set up Dingle Distillery in Co Kerry alongside his business partners Liam LaHart and Peter Mosley back in 2012.

Hughes took on the responsibility of heading up the Dingle Distillery business as its managing director in May 2020. Spirits are high at Dingle, with its gin winning the World’s Best award in 2019 and the release of its core single malt whiskey.

Hughes plans to develop a new distillery and visitor centre, which could represent an investment of €7m.

“We have plans to significantly expand our distillation capacity as well as build a state-of-the-art visitor centre where our current distillery sits,” he said. “We hope to open this to the public in May 2023 alongside significant growth in our whiskey volume in the coming years as well as growth in our export gin sales.”

DAVID BYRNE (26)
ReaDI-Watch
Having witnessed first-hand the daily challenges businesses face regarding investment in innovation, you’d think David Byrne would be put off.

However, undeterred, he set up innovation and R&D management software startup ReaDI-Watch, a NovaUCD client company.

“Business leaders and staff [are] putting so much capital, passion and time to drive their business forward – but struggling to deliver a valuable return, to claim R&D tax credits, to impress investors and customers, to win innovation grant funding, and to get the recognition and rewards they deserve,” he said.

“The business process of innovation and R&D needed a Saas solution so we built one ourselves.”

According to Byrne, Co Wicklow-based ReaDI-Watch has already built up a solid customer base and is profitable. It plans to double its team to 14 people and scale into the UK and North America next year.

RAYMOND VALENTINE (26)
Flexidrive

Raymond Valentine’s eureka moment for FlexiDrive, an app that connects learner drivers with local instructors, happened when he was a 23-year-old marketing student at Technological University Dublin.

Friends and family members had recounted to him negative experiences of trying to get regular driving lessons. It prompted him to create a convenient way to book lessons.

“One evening, I was driving down the road and spotted a taxi, and it clicked with me – getting a driving lesson should be as easy as getting a taxi,” says Valentine, who likens FlexiDrive to “FreeNow for driving lessons”.

Users of the FlexiDrive app browse local instructors, filter them based on availability, location, gender, ratings, reviews and vehicle type. They can even send out a first-available request to all local instructors if they need lessons at short notice.

“We liberate the learners by allowing them to be in control of who they do lessons with and when,” he says.

FlexiDrive has received €175,000 in funding and is on track to close its seed round of €1.25m in early 2022, enabling the startup to roll out the app nationwide next year and to hire more staff. The UK market will follow in late 2022, and Valentine will then examine the US market.

ALICE SHAUGHNESSY (18)
Mirr

Teen entrepreneur Alice Shaughnessy set up tech company Mirr last year with fellow engineering student Jack O’Regan Kenny to develop a smart device that looks like a mirror but works like a tablet. The touchscreen smart mirror allows users to stream Netflix, listen to Spotify, or watch YouTube, all while maintaining a reflective surface on the unused screen space.

The teens developed Mirr with multitasking in mind, Shaughnessy says. O’Regan Kenny came up with the idea after noticing his mother trying to apply make-up while juggling make-up tools, her mirror and her phone.

“You can watch the news on Mirr and brush your teeth in your reflection simultaneously,” Shaughnessy says. “Our patented tech allows us to create a touchscreen experience akin to a smartphone.”

Mirr has received €15,000 in funding through Enterprise Ireland’s New Frontiers programme. The startup hasn’t actively sought other investment, but “it is something we are looking into for the near future,” says the 18-year-old.

SEÁN FINNEGAN (20), JOE HENNIGAN (21) and LUKE SLEMON (23)
Receipt Relay
Are you sick of losing receipts? Receipt Relay has the answer with its e-receipt software aimed at retail and hospitality businesses. Users simply scan a QR code at a point of sale to receive an electronic version of their receipt, cutting down on both hassle and environmental wastage.

For businesses looking to adopt the Receipt Relay app, it allows them to reach their customers, driving post-sale revenue in a way that protects the consumer’s privacy and data while also reducing their carbon footprint.

“The primary objective at the moment is to nail the Irish market so that e-receipts become something familiar for everyday transactions,” says Finnegan. The next step will be to get further funding, expand the team and establish Receipt Relay in the international market.

DAVID SLOANE (19)
Cambrean

Having starred with League of Ireland side Cobh Ramblers Under 19s, David Sloane knows a thing or two about sporting performance.
Although he has since left the Co Cork side, Sloane set up Cambrean inspired by his difficulties tracking his health and fitness. The Co Cork-based company helps aggregate health data from multiple sources, including FitBit or Strava, and allows the user to understand correlations between data.

Since its formation, Sloane has been attracting a fair amount of attention from some heavy-hitters.
“We’re currently in our first round of funding, raising $750k (€650,000),” he said. “After doing my Leaving Cert, I headed to San Francisco, where we got some Sequoia scouts to join our round, along with Wayflyer co-founder Jack Pierse and Evervault founder Shane Curran.”
Sloane has big plans. He hopes to launch publicly in the new year and one day scale the platform into a multi-billion dollar company.

AIMEE CONNOLLY (28)
Sculpted by Aimee

Having painted thousands of faces and tested countless products as a make-up artist, Aimee Connolly had a good idea of what to look for when launching her brand.

Inspired by her passion for make-up and business, beauty influencer Connolly set up Sculpted by Aimee when she was 23. The beauty brand is now one of Ireland’s fastest-growing with over 70 products, its own store in Dundrum and over 400 stockists.

Covid threw up challenges but she adapted and Sculpted grew through the pandemic, particularly online, with overall business up 240pc year on year.

Connolly, a finalist in this year’s EY Entrepreneur of the Year awards, is now making in-roads with her brand in the UK. She has plans to break into the lucrative Middle East market next year before heading to the US and Australia.

BIDEMI AFOLABI (26) and LAUREN O’REILLY (23)
ProMotion

ProMotion co-founders Bidemi Afolabi and Lauren O’Reilly are both pharmacists who have combined their experience in retail pharmacy with their backgrounds in scientific research to build their exciting business.

It turns the health app on your phone into a way to unlock rewards. So when you hit 5,000 daily steps you can convert them into real rewards to be spent with your favourite brands.

“We realised the true importance of consumer insights in driving brand growth and the real challenge for brands in gathering this big data across all retail channels,” says Afolabi.

Companies can directly interact and engage with their consumers through targeted surveys, brand loyalty, and offers, through our consumer-facing mobile application, ProMotion Rewards.”

The app launches in February and O’Reilly says they have some very strong brand partners lined up.

ProMotion has raised pre-seed funding, and will be raising a seed round in mid-2022.

DANIEL IZQUIERDO (22)
Micron Agritech

Daniel Izquierdo is the CEO of Micron Agritech, which he and three fellow students created as a college project when they were studying at Technological University Dublin and harboured ambitions to revolutionise animal health testing.

The agtech startup, set up in 2019, was spun out from TU Dublin with the entrepreneurs’ rapid on-site diagnostic technology for animal parasites. Micron Kit allows farmers and vets to collect, prepare and analyse a sample using a smartphone app that uses AI technology. The lab results are delivered in minutes rather than days, as is now the case.

Izquierdo says: “Parasites are the number one health issue in grazing animals worldwide – they decrease animal productivity, increase required inputs and lead to the production of greenhouse gases. Over the next five years, we will roll out additional rapid health tests for many animal species through our app.”

Micron Agritech closed its first investment round in December, raising €500,000, to bring the parasite detection test from a concept to a working product. It is now raising a further €1m to enable Micron Kit to go worldwide.

SIMON CURRAN (25) and DARRAGH McKAY (27)
Noloco

This year Noloco, a platform for quickly creating custom web apps without writing any code, followed in the footsteps of Stripe, Airbnb and Dropbox by taking part in the prestigious Y Combinator accelerator programme for tech startups.

Dublin-based Simon Curran, a former product owner at Flipdish and Revolut, set up Noloco with Darragh McKay, a fellow Trinity College graduate, last year as a flexible web app builder.

After realising that Noloco’s most successful customers were the ones that already had their own data – such as from spreadsheets or project management tools – the pair simplified their offering to focus on getting customers directly connected to their data sources. The result was a no-code platform for teams to instantly create apps around their business data.

“Noloco does all the heavy lifting,” Curran says. “Once you connect your data from tools like spreadsheets, CRMs and other databases, we automatically create the user interface for you.”

ELLE SANDER (29)
Lifelet Medical

Biomedical engineer Elle Sander is the CEO and co-founder of Lifelet Medical, a medtech firm raising a €2.6m seed round for its treatment of heart valve disease.

Lifelet’s polymer valve means the one in 20 people who develop and suffer from heart valve disease could use one valve for life and wouldn’t need open heart surgery, multiple procedures, or to go on blood thinners for life, Sander says.

“Heart valves today are made out of cow and pig tissue, which have limited durability for patients and are unsustainable,” she says. “Our technology is better for the patient and the planet.”

Sander, who this month met up with doctors at the Texas Medical Center about a clinical trial of the valve, set up the company with Dr Faisal Sharif, an interventional cardiologist who treats heart valve patients and has seen first-hand the need for a better solution.

KLARA O'LEARY (24)
Care Box Collection

Last summer Co Wicklow’s Kara O’Leary saw a gap in the market that ultimately led to her business venture, Care Box Collection. She noticed an increased need for self-care and wellness in everyday life due to Covid-19 uncertainty and the physical distance between friends, family and company teams. She set up Care Box Collection, offering bespoke gift boxes focused on helping recipients look after themselves.

“The importance of self-care has taken a new significance over the past 24 months,” said O’Leary. “We have all had the time and space to reflect on the importance of putting ourselves and our wellbeing first at times and taking time to treat ourselves. Care Box Collection will encourage and aid people in doing exactly that.”

In the coming months, Care Box Collection will expand its product range and increase its customer base across the UK and EU. O’Leary is also set to launch a second company focused on the wedding industry early next year.

ROMY LYNCH (27) and DAVID NEWELL (26)
Unflow

Frustration often breeds the best business ideas, and for Romy Lynch, co-founder of Unflow, it was no different.

Unflow, which David Newell also founded, is a no-code tool for mobile app marketers to deliver in-app content. Non-technical team members can deliver notifications and collect feedback from users without the need for engineering input or App Store approval.

Lynch and co were inspired by frustration when they built a mobile application and found large companies had built out custom tooling to help make changes outside of app release cycles. So they decided to bring this ability to everyone. As a result, Unflow was born, raising $2m (€1.8m) earlier this year.

“We’re working closely with a number of beta customers at the moment to shape the roadmap of the product,” says Lynch.

LAURA McCARTHY (25)
Drink Botanicals Ireland

In late 2017, Drink Botanicals Ireland (DBI) founder Laura McCarthy received a business-defining phone call. Her first customer, local off-licence Redmond’s of Ranelagh, had sold out of DBI’s first gin fusion kit and were already looking for more: “I knew then my business had potential,” she says.

DBI has since thrived, offering premium cocktail and gin kits, drink garnishes and cocktail syrups to retailers, off-licences, bars, restaurants and hotels across Ireland and the UK. It is also stocked by Dunnes Stores, Supervalu, and Avoca, to name a few.

“I plan to expand our product range rapidly across the island of Ireland, focusing heavily on the on-trade, supplying bars, restaurants and hotels,” she says.

“We have been approached by many large distributors and we are currently in the final stages of negotiations with one that we believe fits our brand.”

McCarthy also hopes to export her range of garnish kits and syrups across Europe.

DAVID BARTON (21) and SAMUEL HARNEY (21)
Club Nine
David Barton and Samuel Harney are childhood friends from Kildare with long-held interests in both art and fashion. They believe their sustainable clothing brand, Club Nine, is an answer to the all-pervasive world of fast fashion.
“A clothing brand was a great opportunity to express our artistic and creative ability, while aligning with our interest in business and offering a fashionable, high quality alternative to fast fashion,” says Barton.
The organic cotton and recycled polyester products are manufactured through an ethically certified supply chain and transported in fully sustainable packaging, he says. It is still early days but the pair hope to raise funding in order to expand. Right now the brand lives online but ultimately they envisage bricks-and-mortar stores and overseas markets, as well as collaboration with various Irish artists.

NIAMH DOOLEY (28)
Biasol

Living on the other side of the world from one another, brother and sister Niamh and Ruairi Dooley came up with a unique way to keep in contact last year – setting up a business. Niamh, based in Ireland, and Ruairi, then in Australia, created BiaSol, a food startup. Supported by Enterprise Ireland, it is focused on maximising nutrition and minimising waste in food by repurposing brewers’ spent grain into nutritious and sustainable food products. What was once waste or used as animal feed is now upcycled and used in kitchens across the country.

“We’re starting with craft breweries, but we don’t intend to stop there. Our mission is to combat food waste, improve nutrition and support
local Irish businesses,” says Niamh.

“In the next 12 months, we want to grow the team, release new products for the European market and invest in R&D to upcycle even more by-products.”

ALLEN WIXTED (28)
Plop

Limerick entrepreneur Allen Wixted founded Plop to enable shoppers to use augmented reality to try out products at home – from a luxury sofa to an Yves Saint Laurent bag – before they make a purchase online.

The idea came into its own when stores were shut during lockdowns. Plop creates these augmented reality experiences for leading retailers.

“I had completed my thesis in UL on interactive retail displays and while working at Apple, I taught myself how to build apps,” Wixted says.“I launched one of the first AR apps on the app store and through (working) with customers, built Plop with our team into what it is today. We aim to be the place for retailers to create, deploy and measure the impact of their AR experiences.”

Plop has received funding from Enterprise Ireland and the Local Enterprise Office and is working towards fundraising in the first half of 2022 to finance expansion into UK, EU and US markets.

ANNA SHEEHAN (25), MEREDITH DAVIS (22), ELLIE WALTERS (23) and ELLEN RYALL (25)
Refunk Upcycling

ReFunk Upcycling aims to make the circular furniture economy a mainstream concept, facilitating a three-stage furniture upcycling process – donating, upcycling, and buying.

“We collect unwanted pieces from donators, and list them on our platform,” says co-founder Anna Sheahan. “These pieces are then matched with a local upcycler, who repairs and upcycles them, before relisting them on our platform to be sold to the end buyer.”

The four students had come up with the idea last year during a sustainability-themed hackathon at Trinity College and began making sales during the summer.

“We had noted the growing engagement with sustainable fashion and wanted to emulate this trend in the furniture industry,” she says.

To date Refunk has received around €20k through university accelerators but new investors are being sought to help further prove out the business in Dublin over the next year before a potential move into European cities such as Berlin or Amsterdam.

TIM FARRELLY (21), OMAR SALEM (21) and DAVID DENEHER (20)
Field of Vision

Field of Vision aims to give visually impaired sports fans the most immersive, engaging and exciting experience possible at live games.

“After seeing a viral video of a man bringing his friend to a football game and tracing the position of the ball on his palm, we wanted to build a device that did this for any visually impaired fan,” says co-founder David Deneher.

The technology developed by the three Trinity College students uses AI to track key details such as ball position and team possession in real time, transmitting it to haptic-based handheld devices for fans in the stadium.

“Users feel the pace of a counter-attack, the swerve of a freekick or the power of a shot. We will provide this technology to professional clubs and stadiums for their visually impaired fans on matchday.”

The technology will run as a pilot with Bohemians FC at Dalymount Park and other clubs next year.

PAUL O’SHEA (27)
Peckish

Peckish is building “the last food app you’ll ever need”, says Corkman Paul O’Shea, who set it up in 2019 to enable restaurants to market dishes based on dietary requirements, allergies or personal preferences. Customers use the tool to order everything from a gluten-free burger to a vegan curry in fewer than three clicks across multiple online ordering platforms.

O’Shea says: “I’ve worked in bars, restaurants and hotels while studying computer science and I realised food discovery is really a problem for vegans, vegetarians and (people with) Coeliac disease.”

Peckish received €50,000 from Enterprise Ireland’s Competitive Start Fund this summer and is poised to start raising its seed round. The startup is currently working with about 25 restaurants in Cork City and intends to launch in Dublin early next year at more than 100 restaurants, before entering the UK and the EU.

DANIEL KYNE (24)
OpinionX

For a 24-year-old barely out of university, Daniel Kyne has quite the CV, including with Dublin Tech Summit, as a founding member of the Digital Youth Council of Ireland, a digital and innovation lead at Unilever UK, and as a Techstars global facilitator. Through each job Kyne “experienced first-hand the difficulties of trying to understand what large groups of people care about”.

This led to the creation of OpinionX, a tool that flips traditional market research – and its focus groups – on its head. Using advanced data science, the platform can compare and rank 1,000 different options at the same time and crowdsource missing gaps directly from research participants. More than 1,000 companies – including Adidas and Salesforce – use OpinionX to discover and rank customers’ priorities.

Kyne co-founded the company at the end of 2019 with fellow DCU student Darragh O’Flaherty, raising €130,000 last year ahead of an ongoing seed round.

PAT JOYCE (23) and OLIVER FEENEY (21)
X-Lite

Fancy a cool refreshing can of Sour Watermelon or Ice Lemonade? Mayo lads Pat Joyce and Oliver Feeney have you covered with their refreshing new alcohol brand X-Lite.

Some may say the alcohol market is already a crowded space, Not this pair: “We saw people mixing alcohol with toxic energy drinks, full of additives and artificial ingredients,” says Joyce. “Young people are very conscious of what they put into their bodies, so we developed a healthier alternative with zero sugar, natural flavourings, and natural colourings.”

Feeney continues: “We looked at the alcohol market and asked ourselves what was wrong. It was the products. They are outdated. Today’s consumers are sick of bloaty beer and bored of bland seltzers. So we decided to make something different.”

Stage one for X-Lite has involved launching online and building a young and engaged fan base with what they believe is Ireland’s first direct-to-consumer alcohol brand. The pair hope to begin expanding distribution to retailers next year.

DANIEL HOBBS (27) and CIARÁN O’MARA (24)
Protex AI

Daniel Hobbs had already co-founded his first venture and caught the eye of investors while still at Trinity College by co-founding and later selling study platform BetterExaminations.ie.

This allowed Hobbs focus on his next startup, Protex AI, with Ciarán O’Mara. The new company is building a proactive computer vision tool for industrial workplaces to allow employers identify safety risks before they pose a problem, therefore reducing injuries in the workplace.

Hobbs says: “Both of us have had relatives involved in workplace accidents and after researching it, we found that a person died every 99 minutes due to a work-related injury in 2019.”

The AI-powered software monitors existing cameras in a facility such as a factory to ensure compliance and identify safety issues. The Limerick-based firm has just completed its seed funding round after taking part in the Summer 2021 Y Combinator Batch for early-stage startups.

“We empower health and safety teams to effectively identify the behaviours that lead to accidents and prevent injuries before they even occur,” says Hobbs.

KARA O’SULLIVAN (27)
greens are good for you

Dublin-based fashion rental platform, greens are good for you, gives its customers access to a wardrobe full of its founders Kara O’Sullivan and

Johanna Dooley’s favourite fashion items. Its goal is to allow its customers to consume fashion with a conscience, knowing they are doing so in the most sustainable and affordable way.

The two have had a long interest in fashion rental, with Dooley previously involved in Borrower Boutique. They set up greens are good for you with the focus less on occasion-driven wear and more on everyday wear.

“We aren’t always waiting for the next big birthday party, a graduation or someone’s wedding,” says O’Sullivan. “Instead, we always look forward to getting dressed, whatever the occasion and our customers do too. Whether it’s for dinner and drinks, a girl’s night out or a weekend away, we’ve got your outfit.”

EVAN McGLOUGHLIN (23) and CIAN McNALLY (23)
Diglot Social

Evan McGloughlin and Cian McNally have combined literature, psychology and technology to create Diglot, a context-based language learning company. It takes classic novels like Sherlock Holmes and The Great Gatsby and weaves foreign words into the English sentences. This allows the reader to understand the meaning of the foreign words within the context of the English sentence and without the need to translate.

“This is what really produces fluent speakers,” says McGloughlin. “Now you can read your favourite stories and start picking up your target language from the very start.”

As a language learner and psychology student, McNally had seen numerous studies showing the reasons language learning apps often don’t work. From that insight, after much research, Diglot was created. The pair plan to expand into new titles and languages and to produce an audio version of their product.

“Customers will be able to download their favourite book from the Kindle store, input a language of their choice and a difficulty level tailored to them,” says McNally.

TIMOTHY ORIMOLUSI (24)
QRx

The idea for QRx was born out of necessity for Timothy Orimolusi. As a Cork man living in Dublin he found himself without his inhaler prescription while having an asthma attack.

“The experience made me think, what if I had my prescription on my phone the same way I have my card details or a boarding pass when catching a flight?” he says.

As a Pharmacy student at Trinity College he was well placed to put research into his idea, coupled with over 2,000 hours of experience working in a dispensary. 


“I saw potential for disruption not only in how prescriptions are managed and recorded but also in improving patient compliance and reducing medication errors whether clinical or administrative,” he says.

From that initial idea he created QRx, an end to end healthcare software as a service using blockchain technology with a focus on optimising prescription management for both healthcare providers and the patient using a digital prescription wallet.

DARAGH JORDAN (20) and ERIK JENTETICS (21)
Grafton Digital

For budding entrepreneurs Daragh Jordan and Erik Jentetics, a one-time school project has led from Co Galway to business success in Manhattan.

They set up Galway-based Grafton Digital, a website and app development agency, in 2018 and have since thrived, opening a New York office in July, with plans to grow the business further Stateside.

“We believed businesses both nationally and internationally were not maximising their online presence, which is so essential in today’s business landscape,” said Jordan.

“Through research, we established that the process of building an app/website was daunting to business owners, so we have worked hard to make that process as seamless as possible.

“There has been an explosion of demand for digital, and we have been able to expand exponentially thanks to this and we had the expertise and infrastructure in place pre-pandemic to maximise on this opportunity.”

JOHN HALLEY (27)
Homebid

While working as a technical director for an estate agency, John Halley noticed two things: much of the admin work could be automated and there was a lack of transparency in the bidding process.

“I decided to develop a solution to meet the needs of the estate agents in my network,” Halley says.

The result was HomeBid.ie, a one-stop property portal with a real-time integrated bidding platform that speeds up the existing offer and negotiation process for properties by automating the sales journey. It offers instant bidding notifications, electronic signatures, and a document vault.

The fledgling proptech firm has won funding from Enterprise Ireland’s Competitive Start Fund and Halley plans pitching to investors in January for seed funding. He aims to have 800 estate agencies on board across six countries by 2025.

TOM McCARTHY (21)
Patch

When the 13-year-old Tom McCarthy began building a nuclear fusion reactor in his parents’ shed in Castlebar, it was clear he was destined for interesting things.

He is currently studying Theoretical Physics at Trinity College Dublin and works on Patch, a program he set up three years ago for future entrepreneurs, innovators, scientists and engineers aged between 16 and 21. It is based at CHQ’s high-end co-working space, Dogpatch Labs.

“We find high potential young people and accelerate their development,” he says. “Since 2018 we’ve built a wonderful community of entrepreneurs, engineers, technologists and scientists. We’re non-profit and generously supported by Dogpatch Labs, Stripe, and entrepreneurs including Mark Cummins, Ray Nolan and Bobby Healy.”

McCarthy is focused on building out Patch to be effective and secure for the long-term but his attitude captures today’s startup spirit: “I have no idea what I’ll be doing beyond that but if I find a problem that I really want to solve, I will try and solve that.”