Carlow company wins South East Business Innovation Centre Pitching Competition
The event formed part of BIC's 25th anniversary
A Carlow company has emerged victorious from a regional competition organised by the South East Business Innovation Centre (BIC).
To mark BIC’s 25th anniversary supporting entrepreneurs it called for ambitious and innovative startups and scaleups from Carlow, Kilkenny, Wexford, Waterford and Tipperary to compete to pitch virtually in front of judges last Thursday. (Read about that here).
Selected were Allen O’Neill of The Data Works in Carlow, Christina O’Dwyer of Everywhere Medical based in Tipperary and Liam Dunne of Waterford’s Klearcom.
While all three gave great presentations, Mr O’Neill impressed the judges with his business-to-business cloud platform that can acquire, transform, and analyse unstructured data from the web in extremely high volume and was confirmed winner on the day. The Data Works provides an engine that allows organisations to collect web data faster, cheaper and at a far higher quality than before.
The judges were John Phelan, All-Island Director of the Halo Business Angels Network (HBAN), Keith Brock of Enterprise Ireland and Ed Hendrick of Wexford based Sonru.
The prizes included a cash prize of €2,000, an iPAD Air and FREE incubation office space & consultancy in the South East BIC’s Incubation Centre in Waterford.
Fireside Chat
The competition formed part of an overall Celebrating Success virtual event which also featured an engaging fireside chat with David Walsh, founder of Netwatch and HaloCare in Carlow, Patsy Carney who set up Eirgen Pharma in Waterford and Ann-Marie McSorley of Kilkenny based Veri who were joined by Jennifer Melia of Enterprise Ireland.
The lively conversation was facilitated by Aidan Shine CEO of South East BIC and highlighted the positive and supportive environment for startups and scaleups in the region and the seasoned entrepreneurs both inspired and entertained the invited guests with stories of how their success started.
Speaking about the event, Aidan Shine, CEO of South East BIC said ‘We succeeded in giving a mix of both the past successes from the South East Region, showcasing and highlighting the fantastic clients we have worked with over the years, as well as pointing toward the future success of the region with the wonderful finalists in the pitching competition. Allen and the team at The Data Works were a worthy winner and we look forward to working with him and the other finalists as they start and scale’.
South East BIC has been supporting entrepreneurs in the South East since 1995, focused on innovative enterprises through specialised business consultancy services. Over the last 25 years, South East success stories such as Eirgen Pharma, Veri, Sonru, Scurri and Netwatch all worked with South East BIC to develop their early stage strategies.
