Start-ups hoping their spark of genius will burn bright and win top accolade
As the summit has risen to become one of the biggest of its kind in Europe, the Spark of Genius award has emerged as one of the most sought-after titles among international tech start-up companies.
This year, more than 1,000 applicants were whittled down to 100 finalists, who have been pitching their wares throughout the event in a bid to win €100,000 in fresh funding a myriad of legal, accounting and professional services, as well as mentoring from the likes of summit organisers KPMG, and Mason, Hayes & Curran.
Last year’s winner — Redeem & Get, a Dublin-based company helping businesses to manage their group online customer offers — is about to embark on a second round of funding.
“Winning last year was a huge game-changer for us. Without it, yes we would have still survived — we’d still be in business now; this help actually came sooner than we had envisaged, but the mentoring we’ve been able to tap into as a result has been immense and it’s been an amazing trip over the past year,” said Redeem & Get co-founder, Gene Murphy.
Pointing to the Government’s focus on the tech sector, Enterprise Ireland and the National Digital Research Centre (where the company is currently based), Mr Murphy said Ireland’s technology sector is now being talked about overseas, with evidence of “a real culture-shift towards supporting companies”.
Jobs and Enterprise Minister Richard Bruton called the summit “a great initiative that offers an amazing opportunity for Ireland to show the global technology community what we’re doing in this area”.
Spark of Genius winners also know that they’re catching the eye of their industry peers. Last year’s winners were picked by a panel of judges, including the likes of Mike Butcher of online technology news service, TechCrunch — who is also speaking at today’s session — Mike Birch, founder of the Bebo social media site, and senior representatives of ACT Venture Capital and California-based seed fund programme 500 Start-ups.
