10 Start-Ups take off on new Furthr Foundry Accelerator Programme

Ten of the country’s most aspiring tech entrepreneurs are now participating in Ireland’s latest Pre-Seed Accelerator Programme.  Just launched by Furthr, Ireland’s leading business innovation centre, the programme’s key partners include Growing Capital, Microsoft’s Founder Platform and the Guinness Enterprise Centre.

The new Furthr Foundry Accelerator programme is a 12-week intensive programme, established with the intention of delivering 10 investor ready high potential start-ups who will take on pre-seed investment following their successful completion of the programme.

The programme has been devised to complement national and European policy around supporting and nurturing Ireland’s entrepreneurial and start-up community, and creating an environment where entrepreneurs can raise funding, reduce the risks, develop skills and access capacity-building services.

Furthr’s team of experienced consultants who deliver the programme, bring a wealth of experience in helping start-ups with business planning to support their accelerating, funding and connecting needs.

Participants in the Accelerator programme will undertake seven core modules to get them investor ready, covering topics from getting product market fit, resources management and technology planning, right through to Masterclasses on sales, marketing, financials, legals and pitch preparation as the final step. Throughout the programme, participants will be supported by business and investor mentorship teams.

Participants will attend 10 in-person, full day Masterclasses hosted in the Guinness Enterprise Centre (GEC), the largest incubator centre on the island of Ireland and for which Furthr is a founding partner and the managing partner. Foundry participants can also avail of a dedicated shared office space in the GEC throughout the duration of the programme.

The Furthr Foundry Accelerator programme culminates with an ‘Investor Pitch Event’, scheduled to take place on 26 June, where participating companies will have the opportunity to present their business proposition and plans to potential investors.

Companies participating in the inaugural Furthr Foundry Accelerator programme cover a wide range of diverse tech empowered businesses and industry sectors, leveraging some of the fast emerging technologies to enable digital transformation for many businesses, including artificial intelligence (AI), data analytics, cloud platform delivery and biotech.

According to Martin Murray, CEO at Furthr: “Today’s announcement is another significant step for Furthr in the rollout of additional services that are very much aligned to national and European policy to support the growth of entrepreneurship and the scaling of micro and small enterprises. Our success will be measured by supporting our clients to become ‘investor ready’ to take on their first institutional investment.”

He added: “Since our inception in 1988, operating under our previous name, Dublin Business Innovation Centre, we have worked with more than 6000 start-up and scale-up founders and have helped raise more than €500m in seed capital which has created thousands of high-quality jobs. With the launch of our new Foundry Accelerator, Furthr is confident we can now engage and extend our reach to more start-ups to help them at this critical moment in their business growth journey”.

The Furthr Foundry Pre-Seed Accelerator is being supported by Furthr’s three key partners in this venture; Growing Capital, the leading provider of pre-seed private investment in Ireland, Microsoft’s Founder Platform, providing technology credits and global expert/mentor access and the Guinness Enterprise Centre, providing a dedicated shared office space for foundry participants with the option to have access to co-working space post programme for a combined period of six months.

Last month, Furthr was included on the inaugural Financial Times /Statista list of ‘Europe’s Leading Start-Up Hubs’, which showcases the top 125 start-up hubs located in 21 countries across Europe.  Furthr was ranked 72nd in the listing, making Furthr the highest placed start-up hub in the Republic of Ireland and one of only three start-up innovation hubs included from the island of Ireland.

The companies participating in the Furthr Foundry Accelerator are:

1. Allocator Training Institute – a unique training certification business for investment and risk professionals working in the pensions, endowments and sovereign wealth funds sectors.
2. Biovit Technologies – a food technology business that is developing a nutritional delivery system that drives the absorption of vitamins and nutrients into the body by up to 70 times faster than other existing systems.
3. CoSwipe – an all-in-one B2B platform for data-driven marketing campaigns.
4. Decision Analytics: – Decision Analytics automates business intelligence from deep within your data.
5. Safely – Safely is the complete driver safety platform, providing fleets with a solution that expertly blends AI with behavioural psychology to cut incidents by over 50%.
6. TeddleAI – AI powered personalised IT education supporting student success and productivity for instructors.
7. Hiremate – developers of a software solution to fully automate the Plant Hire process.
8. Passionfruit Mobile – providers of a white-labelling platform to support branded mobile network businesses.
9. Simple Probate – a legal tech company that is streamlining the process to support executors of a will administer an estate from beginning to end.
10. WorkStuff – developers of a work productivity tool to support sales, marketing and product teams improve revenue success.

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