Members of the Trustev team Chris Kennedy, Pat Phelan and John Peavoy
A young Irish tech company out of Cork called Trustev, which specialises in social fingerprinting technology, has been named as one of the 30 finalists competing for the coveted Disrupt Cup at the TechCrunch Disrupt event in New York.
Trustev, which recently became part Telefónica’s Wayra programme in Dublin, claims to be the first company of its kind to use social data from Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn as a primary data source when online businesses are making identity determinations.
Entrepreneur Pat Phelan heads the company, and its technology is the brainchild of CTO Chris Kennedy.
Thirty cutting-edge companies, chosen from applicants all across the globe, will launch their products on the Startup Battlefield stage, in front of an all-star panel consisting of investors, VCs and influencers in the global tech community, all before a live and online audience of several hundred thousand viewers.
TechCrunch’s editors, working with the VCs, seasoned entrepreneurs, and product experts, will select five companies for a final round on the third and final day of Disrupt.
Only one Battlefield contender takes home US$50,000 and the coveted Disrupt Cup. Previous winners like Dropbox, Yammer and Mint have gone on to become global household names.
Taking on the Start-up Battlefield
Four members of the Trustev team have travelled to NYC for the event and they will compete over the next 72 hours against the other start-ups.
“We’re immensely excited to have been selected as a Disrupt finalist. It just helps validate that the calibre of technology start-ups coming out of Ireland can compete on the world stage and we’re really looking forward to the challenge of the next few days,” Phelan said.
Trustev employs nine people in Dublin and Cork and expects to employ 20 people by the end of the summer.
The company has also appointed an influential advisory team that includes Trevor Healy, who sold his company Amobee to Singtel for US$321m last month, digital entrepreneur Dylan Collins, who sold his company Demonware to Activision in 2006 for US$15m and is currently leading Box of Awesome in the UK, David Coallier of EngineYard, and Anil Hansjee, the former head of M&A at Google EMEA.
In recent weeks, it recruited ex-Facebook data scientist Diarmuid Thoma as its new ‘data overlord’, and signed up six new corporate customers.
Trustev is also about to open offices in the UK and the US.
The company has raised up to €250,000 so far and is in the process of raising further funding.
