The overall winner will be announced at an awards ceremony on 16 October in Dublin.
Enterprise Ireland has announced the five finalists for this year’s annual High Potential Start-Up (HPSU) Founder of the Year Award.
The finalists were whittled down from 38 high potential start-ups, with the overall winner set to be announced at an awards ceremony on 16 October in Dublin.
The finalists this year include the 2017-founded Senus, a start-up that provides measurement, reporting and verification technology for natural capital. The start-up rebranded from its previous name Farmeye in 2024.
Pilot Path, another finalist, offers an all-inclusive training platform for pilots. Founded in 2020, the company works with a consortium of partner universities, flight schools and airlines.
While Marama Labs builds analytical tools for the biotech industry. The company’s patented CloudSpec instrument develops on existing UV-vis spectrophotometers and offers a way to analyse cloudy liquid samples.
NeuroBell is a 2023 founded medical devices start-up based in Cork. The company’s first product, Luna, is a portable brain monitor with AI-powered seizure detection. According to Enterprise Ireland, Luna gives neonatal ICU staff the ability to quickly diagnose seizures without subspecialty expertise.
Assiduous, a capital markets fintech company headquartered at Nova UCD, has also made it to the final round. Earlier this year, the company raised €1m with the support of Enterprise Ireland HPSU funding.
“We are honoured to be nominated alongside our fellow founders and we couldn’t have brought Assiduous to life in the last couple of years without Enterprise Ireland, its ecosystem of advisers and supports,” said Fergal Meegan, the CEO and co-founder of Assiduous.
“Enterprise Ireland’s HPSU programme has for more than two decades been a foundational building block for ambitious Irish companies seeking to scale internationally.”
In its seven years, the HPSU Founders Forum has seen more than 480 start-up participants from a wide variety of sectors.
This year, the overall winner will be selected by a panel of judges, which include Andreea Wade, a general partner at Delta Partners VC; Brian Shields, the CEO and co-founder of Neurent Medical; and Tom Cusack, the divisional manager of industrial and life sciences at Enterprise Ireland.
Last year, Heidi Davis, the co-founder and CEO of Peri, which develops an AI-powered wearable device to help manage perimenopause symptoms, won the overall award.
She was preceded in 2023 by Sinéad Crowther, who won for her start-up Soothing Solutions, which develops a range of honey jelly pops called Tonstix that provide an alternative to children’s lozenges.
Don’t miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic’s digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.
