Waterford startups join innovative high growth startups on Enterprise Ireland programme
The programme prepares start-up clients for seed investment
The first 12-week Prep4Seed Programme of 2024 culminated this week at the Investor Pitch Day when 12 startups pitched to an audience of Angel Investors & VCs at Enterprise Ireland’s headquarters.
The programme, delivered by the four Irish Business Innovation Centres (BICs), in collaboration with Enterprise Ireland, prepares start-up clients for seed investment bringing participants through the investor readiness process quickly and effectively.
The Irish BICs are AxisBIC, Furthr, South East BIC & WestBIC.
The 12 Irish based early-stage companies pitching for over €14.6 million in investment were from a variety of industry sectors including: Industrial, Life Sciences, FinTech, Food and ICT.
SETU spin-out, Waterford-based BioEnz Technologies led by Tim Roche is focused on the discovery and commercialisation of novel proprietary enzyme solutions from nature for therapeutic, nutrition and Cleantech applications.
Their intellectual property consists of an exclusively licensed microbial and enzyme bio-bank and proprietary enzyme discovery know-how.
GoChallenge, headed by John Barron delivers the cultural and human elements that people crave most from work. They provide social interactions between colleagues, no matter where their work happens.
They provide a sense of community and shared identity and their team-based activities deliver opportunities for movement, friendship and shared learning.
They are revenue generating and have run multi-country GoChallenges with companies like Gartner, Three, and Corporate Care and they are raising funding to grow and scale globally.
Leo McAdams, Divisional Manager, Enterprise Ireland said: “The ambition and capability of Ireland’s start-ups has never been higher than it is today. The evidence is clear in the calibre of talent and innovation demonstrated by the 12 start-ups spread across a range of sectors that are pitching today. Through the Prep4Seed programme, delivered in collaboration with the four BICs, Enterprise Ireland will continue to support these future enterprise leaders and start-ups to thrive and influence the future of global business.”
Speaking about their participation on the programme, Tim Roche of BioEnz said: “Working with South East BIC on the Prep4seed programme has been transformative for BioEnz Technologies Ltd in terms of providing us with essential guidance and tools for the seed investment raising process. The increased confidence that our engagement with the South East BIC team has given us in our financial and growth potential assumptions and projections has been a key outcome for us; as has been the systematic ability to iterate and stress-test these on behalf of our management team and prospective investors.”