Start-up lands $50m funding

Irish entrepreneur Oisín Hanrahan has landed a $50m (€45.64m) investment through his US-based home services startup, Handy.

Mr Hanrahan, a native of Dublin who is addressing the Web Summit this week, established the company along with three fellow co-founders in 2012 having dropped out of Harvard Business School to work on the project.

The Series C investment, led by Boston-based Fidelity Investments, brings the total funds raised by New York-based Handy to more than $110m and will allow it to expand outside of its current markets, Mr Hanrahan said.

“Our vision has been simple, to connect customers to professionals of virtually every home service with the tap of a button,” said Mr Hanrahan.

“With this recent funding round, we will continue to increase our presence in each of our cities, offer more home services and improve the platform to continue to deliver the experience that the hundreds of thousands of people using the platform have come to expect of us.”

The start-up, which has racked up more than one million bookings, currently operates in 33 cities across the US, Canada, and UK.

Separately, Cork-headquartered design manufacturing company PCH is expanding its Highway 1 accelerator programme for next year by putting more money on the table.

Companies will now have the choice between giving up 5% equity in their company for $50,000 or up to $100,000 for 8%.

“With almost 20 years of experience in hardware, we are able to share our insights about how to get products made, how to scale the business, and how to get value out of each dollar of investment,” said PCH founder Liam Casey .

Applications for the 2016 programme can be made at http://highway1.io/apply.