GreenTech HQ welcomes EI’s Founders Listening Tour

Enterprise Ireland’s Founders Listening tour continued this week, visiting Enniscorthy’s GreenTech HQ on Tuesday, to meet founders from the south east.

Founders and start-ups from the south-east of Ireland gathered at Enniscorthy’s GreenTech HQ on Tuesday (27 May) and shared their thoughts with Enterprise Ireland on the regional and national ecosystem. There was much discussion round what’s working and what more could be done to support start-ups and scale-ups.

Enniscorthy was the third stop on the tour which sees Enterprise Ireland (EI) travel to all the regions in Ireland to gather input and insights from the start-up community as it gathers the thoughts of those at the coalface, helping to inform the roadmap for its new strategy to support 1,000 new start-ups over the next five years.

With Dublin, Galway and county Wexford behind them, next stop is Cork, followed by Drogheda, Mullingar and Donegal in coming days, and rounding off in Dublin again with a Stakeholders Listening Session in late June.

The event began with a panel discussion where chair Ann O’Dea and EI’s Conor O’Donovan were joined by two local founders.

After many years working for Daft, Max Shannon recently bought a house in Enniscorthy and he found the whole process to be so painful that he decided to found his company, Rylax, a property management platform designed for homeowners, renovators and self-builders to take the pain out of buying and managing a new home. He spoke of the loneliness of being an entrepreneur, and how much he got from being in the room with fellow founders.

As co-founder of Brandbuilders, Yvonne Johnson is a seasoned entrepreneur, with several successful sales, marketing and distribution businesses behind her. She and her partner moved to the south-east from Dublin when their kids were young, principally as a lifestyle choice, but she pointed out that today remote working means one can found a business almost anywhere.

O’Donovan, head of entrepreneurship and start-ups, who is leading the tour for Enterprise Ireland, said he was impressed by the sheer breadth of sectors represented on the day. “We’ve met companies from construction, manufacturing, wine making, sustainability and digital tech, so there’s a really strong vibrant ecosystem here in the south-east, in terms of companies, and also in terms of stakeholders across the region and the supports that they provide.”

“Having the listening tour here was fantastic, particularly for the south-east where we find Enterprise Ireland is not as visible on the ground here,” said Ed Murphy, CEO of GreenTech HQ, and an established entrepreneur and investor himself. “To have Enterprise Ireland come and listen and to, understand the issues and the challenges that are faced by start-ups and scale-ups in the south-east is very, very important.”

David Bowles, managing partner at Yield Labs, facilitated the roundtable discussion again which saw lively debate and many new connections made between founders. “It’s great to see the variety of feedback we’re getting, not just regionally-based, but also the types of companies,” he said. “We’re coming across medtech companies, we’re coming across early stage, we’re coming across companies that have never really accessed Enterprise Ireland before, but still have highly valuable thoughts in terms of how we can improve the start-up ecosystem.”

“Again it was great to see founders and business-owners being so open and frank about what is working and what supports could make a difference to them,” said Ann O’Dea of Silicon Republic, partners on the tour. “And like the other regions, what really struck me was the generosity of the more established founders with their knowledge, when it came to the early-stage start-ups.”

Next stop on the Founders Listening Tour is the south-west, hosted by Cork’s AxisBIC, followed by visits to the midlands, north-west and north-east over the coming weeks, and rounding off with a final stakeholder event in Dublin in late June.

While the tour can only reach a relatively small sample of start-ups and founders, EI welcomes feedback from all of the community, and asks that interested founders and start-ups that are not taking part in the tour should feel free to leave feedback via the Founders Listening Tour survey here, before the end of June.

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