Pictured: The jubilant Trutev team in Austin last night - Chris Kennedy, Donal Cahalane and Pat Phelan
Cork security tech start-up Trustev has battled against and beaten some of the world’s leading start-ups at the SXSW tech, media and art conference in Texas, taking top prize at the SXSW Accelerator competition.
This award positions Trustev on the same path as previous success stories at SXSW like Twitter, Foursquare and Facebook and Uber.
Over 1,000 companies from all corners of the globe applied for the gruelling six month application process, narrowed down to 50 finalists who presented over two days at the world’s largest technology festival to some of the world’s top technology leaders.
Last August the EU Commission named Trustev Europe’s Top Technology Startup.
In October the company raised one of Europe’s largest ever seed rounds of US$3.5m from some of the world’s top investors.
One of the world’s hottest start-ups
Since then they’ve been named one of Forbes magazine’s hottest global start-ups on top of a host of other accolades.
Based in Cork, in less that twelve months the company has grown from three to 19 employees and now has over 100 customers in five countries.
Trustev protects online transactions against fraud by verifying the identity of customers prior to payments being completed.
“We’re over the moon to be bringing this award home to Ireland,” said founder and CEO Pat Phelan.
“It comes at a great time for us as we prepare to open our US office in New York in just a few weeks. Ireland had an incredible presence at the event this year. Our start-up cousins, ViddyAd put in an incredible performance in their category which was the talk of the event. The Irish pavilion organised by Enterprise Ireland and the IDA was one of the centrepieces of the trade show.
“Once again Ireland boxed far above its weight in the global technology community. We’ve spoken to several companies who are planning to set up operations in Ireland as a result,” Phelan said.
