Taking on the Dragons and Alan Sugar: Meet the Irish host of the latest business reality television show

Ready Set StartUP sees 10 early-stage entrepreneurs battle it out for a £100,000 (€115,000) investment prize. Along the way, they’ll be guided and mentored by industry experts and assisted in making their innovative business ideas a reality.

At the helm of the show is Simon Atkins, a 34-year-old Co Mayo native who is both its host and executive producer, and is hoping to break new ground with the show’s format. When you think of business TV, the likes of Dragons’ Den and The Apprentice likely come to mind. The latter Atkins admits is undoubtedly popular, but it’s time for a new player to enter the boardroom.

“The Apprentice is amazing,” he says “but when people go on these days, is it for the job with Alan Sugar? Or because they want to get famous? I don’t know. This [show] is more about empowering young people to take control of their own lives.”

The show was initially filmed in London in 2020, “in the height of one of the hottest summers” during the pandemic. The challenges ranged from keeping the cast and crew safe to ultimately producing a series that wouldn’t be “a Covid show,” Atkins says, which meant somehow omitting masks and the precautions taken from view.

Another challenge for the show was that the company who make it, Pictures in Motion, was a start-up, too. “Essentially,” Atkins says, “I was making a show about entrepreneurs while becoming an entrepreneur myself. It’s been a real real labour of love.”

Something that gives the show a freshness is its contestants, who are younger and more international than normally seen in the industry. “They’re young, they’re characters. They’re ambitious, and they’re trying to find their way and find their own feet in entrepreneurship,” Atkins says. Plus, they come from all over, with participants from Australia, Argentina, and of course, Ireland.

Irishman Shalom Osiadi comes bearing his innovative food delivery start-up, and without giving too much away, “gets on quite well,” Atkins admits. One of the judges is also Irish – businessman Eamonn Carey.

“When we were casting we just wanted to make sure that it really represented not just the UK but a wide range of people from different places,” Atkins says.

What he hopes for most of all, though, is “that young people will relate to this series and think, you know, maybe I could actually do what they’re doing”

And if the roles were to be reversed, what would Atkins himself pitch? “It’d be something in the clothes arena or male grooming arena. There’s a lot of stuff out there for women but like, what about our stylish men that don’t want to pay thousands of pounds for a suit?” he laughs, “maybe next season.”

Ready Set StartUP is available to stream on Prime Video now.