Start-ups and scale-ups from the midlands gathered in Mullingar for the sixth edition of the Founders Listening Tour.
Monday (9 June) saw the midlands leg of the current Enterprise Ireland Founders Listening Tour take place at Irish Manufacturing Research (IMR) in Mullingar.
The region’s start-ups had the opportunity to give their feedback to Enterprise Ireland on the needs of the Irish ecosystem, particularly for those starting businesses in the region, and they got to hear from a special guest, Minister for Enterprise, Tourism and Employment Peter Burke, TD.
This was the sixth edition of the tour that sees EI travel around Ireland to gather input and insights from founders. The aim is for the feedback gathered to help shape the roadmap for its new strategy to support 1,000 new start-ups over the next five years.
“This is a very critical part of our journey trying to improve and support the start-up space,” said Minister Burke.
“It’s critical that people who have gone on that journey establishing their own business get all the support they can quickly, and what we want to do is really have a simpler, lighter, faster approach whereby we can get support into them at a key stage in that journey to ensure that they can be successful and realise their objectives.
“We also are very clear that we want to realise that objective of having 1,000 new start-up companies over the next five years – which is a very significant target – and the employment that that brings and the increase in exports as well which will be critical for Enterprise Ireland’s mission statement.”
The event began with a panel discussion where chair Ann O’Dea and EI’s Conor O’Donovan were joined by two local founders.
New Zealand-born Jenna Farrell is a co-founder of Scopey, an AI tool for subcontractors on fast-moving large projects who use WhatsApp to log voice and message notes. Scopey AI then takes those voice notes and turns them into logged data and structured reports for the office.
Having run a software agency in Melbourne, Australia, Farrell moved to Ireland three years ago where she founded Scopey which is run from Longford.
“I think it’s great that Enterprise Ireland are asking for real feedback and they definitely got a lot of that today,” she said. “Enterprise Ireland has been a really great support for us from the beginning but, like every company and organisation, there’s lots of improvements that can be made.”
Mark Gibbons is CEO and co-founder of Tapitag, a software development company based in Athlone, shipping out to 87 countries globally with more than 50,000 users on its platform, that specialises in digital business cards, review management, gamified donations and proximity marketing. It boasts clients such as Airbus, UEFA, Chelsea Football Club and IDA Ireland.
“I thought it was really, really beneficial to be here and to get our points across of what we think would help our companies. And it was lovely to see that we weren’t on our own in terms of some of the stuff we discussed,” Gibbons said.
“I’m absolutely delighted to welcome the community here today, all the founders and Enterprise Ireland, and to have the conversation about what are the support structures that they need to help them and support them as businesses to grow,” said Barry Kennedy, CEO of Irish Manufacturing Research.
“It was a full house here in Mullingar at IMR,” said O’Donovan. “We heard a lot around how can we be a little bit more digital in terms of making the supports that are available for start-ups across the Government ecosystem more accessible, how using digital tools, using AI could speed that up. And speed came up a lot. How can we really ensure that we’re keeping up, that we’re being fast enough in terms of delivery of services to support entrepreneurs as they chase the next big opportunity.”
The regional leg of the tour finished up yesterday, with a well-attended north-west edition. Watch out for our report from Letterkenny on Friday (13 June). The tour finishes with a stakeholder event in Dublin later this month.
As the tour can only reach a representative sample of start-ups and founders, Enterprise Ireland welcomes feedback from interested founders and start-ups via the Founders Listening Tour survey here, before the end of June.
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