Trinity College Dublin. Image: David Soanes/Shuttestock
Having churned out start-ups with an accumulated €6m of funding in the past, Trinity’s LaunchBox accelerator has revealed the 2017 cohort.
Now five years on the go, LaunchBox enjoys an eclectic mix of past start-ups, with some internationally renowned entrepreneurs having walked through the doors of Trinity College Dublin (TCD).
FoodCloud, for example, which helps businesses to redistribute surplus food to those who need it, has proved a stunning success, finishing second place in Virgin’s Voom competition last year.
Add that to Touchtech, a payment processing venture, and Artomatix, which develops tools for automating digital media creation, and the trio of LaunchBox alumni have created around 100 jobs.
This year’s collection of start-ups includes Equine Medirecord, one of the growing number of companies looking at horse health, specifically at building a platform for recording racehorse and bloodstock medication information.
Elsewhere, there’s Self, which aims to solve sizing issues plaguing the fashion e-commerce industry, and TicketChain, which will enlist blockchain technology to safely and ethically manage the resale of tickets for high-profile events.
The latter is in one of the more topical areas at the moment, with a growing push to revolutionise how ticketing companies sell (and often resell) tickets.
“LaunchBox is an opportunity for our students to back themselves and use their ambition, talent and innovation to start a successful company,” said Diarmuid O’Brien, CIO at TCD.
“New businesses account for 67pc of job growth in Ireland. Our students and their businesses can create jobs, develop new products and services, and positively impact Ireland and beyond.”
This year’s LaunchBox will see the 10 companies receive office space; funding; mentorship; access to alumni, partner and investor networks; and the ideal collaborative environment to launch their new ventures.
These businesses will work diligently to deliver investor-ready ventures by the end of the summer.
“Bank of Ireland and Trinity College Dublin have a long legacy of working together and this relationship continues to grow,” said David Tighe, head of innovation at Bank of Ireland, which sponsors the project.
“We recently opened our latest Workbench facility in Trinity to help foster entrepreneurship, and today we are delighted to announce we are once again supporting the 2017 LaunchBox programme.”
With descriptions provided by TCD, below are the 10 companies involved in the programme.
- Equine Medirecord aims to develop, sell and maintain a mobile application and website to allow proper recording of medicines administered to racehorses and other bloodstock.
- Franc is a magazine that wants to give a view of fashion that is both intelligent and accessible.
- Lexi wants to change how we learn, with the goal of creating a more immersive environment for children to learn a language.
- Marsh Sisters is creating high-end, handcrafted luxe marshmallows that are gluten- and dairy-free.
- Self seeks to solve the size-and-fit issue apparent in the fashion e-commerce industry.
- SpeakUpp will develop a platform for speaking events involving crowds of any size.
- Stoury aims to create a cross-platform application to revolutionise the tourism industry by allowing people to create their own custom tours.
- TicketChain is developing a ticketing platform, allowing events, venues and stadiums to control their own primary and secondary ticket markets, backed by blockchain.
- Tourus wants to deliver a platform that provides integrated solutions for decreasing costs and increasing visitor engagement for established cultural sites.
- Wynk is producing a mobile dating app.
