Do your due diligence when it comes to finding the right investor. That was just some of the advice offered by Flipdish’s Conor McCarthy at a start-up gathering this week.
On Monday (15 December), Technological University Dublin and Silicon Republic teamed up to host Founders’ Journeys – a festive seasonal gathering for the Enterprise Ireland New Frontiers cohorts from across the wider Dublin region. The event took place in the Salesforce Tower in Dublin city.
This event brought together start-up participants from New Frontiers programmes delivered by IADT and Nova UCD, Dundalk IT and DCU, and of course TU Dublin, and was designed to allow attendees to connect with peers from across the region.
Enterprise Ireland’s New Frontiers programme is delivered in 18 locations around the Republic of Ireland, designed to offer founders the skills to move from business idea to investor-ready start-up, as well as offering a funding package once the business idea has been validated.
The gathering heard from CEO and co-founder of one of Ireland’s unicorn start-ups, Flipdish, Conor McCarthy, about the realities of fundraising and managing the start-up journey, in a fireside chat with Silicon Republic’s Ann O’Dea. The open Q&A afterwards saw great questions from the early-stage start-ups present who were eager to learn from one of Ireland’s unicorns, and McCarthy was very honest in his answers.
Speaking after the event McCarthy said when he and his co-founder were starting out they had reached out to other founders who were very generous with their advice, so he was clearly happy to continue the tradition.
One of McCarthy’s nuggets of advice to start-ups looking for investment was to find the right investor for them.
“I would start off by asking yourself what you want from an investor,” he said. “Are you just looking for money, or are you looking for other types of assistance, and go from there. I think if you have any gut feel or inklings at all that they’re not the right investor or they might cause you problems, I would just avoid it, or at least put those concerns to bed by doing your own due diligence.
“In our case, we were looking for investors that would allow us to do our own thing, and were happy to work to a similar time scale,” he said. “We wanted to build a large business we knew would take a little bit of time, so we weren’t looking for people who wanted in and out in a couple of years.”
Niall Shanley, senior manager, Entrepreneurship Programmes and Support Services at TU Dublin, said gatherings like this are very important: “When founders meet each other, they have an opportunity to discuss their journey and their pathway, how they’ve got to where they are. It’s an opportunity for them to learn from other people, so that they don’t have to learn the hard way every time. And I think that’s important.”
New Frontiers alumni
The fireside was followed by a New Frontiers alumni panel featuring Meg Brennan, the founder of Polliknow, Michael Guerin, the founder and CEO of Imvizar, Barry Armstrong, the founder and MD of Antreo and Greta Dunne, the founder of Marker Video, all of whom have been busy fundraising for their start-ups in recent years.
Barry Armstrong, co-founder of fintech Antreo, is originally from Co Down but opted to found his second start-up in the Republic of Ireland because of the ecosystem here.
“It was the ecosystem here in the Republic, with Enterprise Ireland and the local LEOs, we felt that it was the best location for us to establish the business,” he said. “Also, Brexit played a part in terms of establishing here, because essentially, we will become a regulated entity. We need to be regulated by a central bank, and Ireland was a good location for that, local access and a smaller market. It makes sense for us.”
Michael Guerin, founder of immersive storytelling start-up Imvizar echoed that sentiment, and also pointed to the presence of all the big multinationals in Ireland. Salesforce in Dublin was an early client, and now Imvizar has its technology in 10 Salesforce buildings around the world. To date, the start-up has raised some €2m, from angel investors, Enterprise Ireland, Delta Partners and more recently Lakeside Capital.
Greta Dunne is founder of user-generated video review marketplace, Marker Video, boasting clients from Unilever to Hello Fresh, and like the others she explained that New Frontiers had been vital in her learning about fundraising and the language of the start-up world.
Meg Brennan of biodiversity tech start-up Polliknow, has a background in biomedical engineering, and is an avid beekeeper, so she matched the two capabilities with her learnings from New Frontiers to take her start-up forward. She pointed to the space and time offered by the New Frontiers programme to properly prove and validate her business idea.
She, along with all the other speakers, concurred on the generosity of fellow founders with their knowledge and learnings in Ireland, another definite plus when it came to starting a company in Ireland.
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