㊙️ Encryption isn't just for spies
April in Irish tech and start-ups saw some new venture funds, significant raises and some of Ireland's cutting edge companies discussed away from our shores
Welcome to the slightly delayed 12th edition of “The Land of Saints, Scholars, and Techies”!
Check out the stories below that you might have missed in April!
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The Stories
Evervault is certainly not boring 🛡️ It is always nice to get national or international media coverage for your business. However, if you are a growing tech company and especially deeptech then getting a write-up in NotBoring the newsletter by Packy McCormick is the real holy grail. Evervault was covered during April and Packy really managed to dig into one of the hottest Irish start-ups - check it out here. Some interesting quotes below
Evervault is riding the right wave: GDPR, CCPA, and an alphabet soup of regulations and compliance regimes, combined with the rise of crypto, mean that there is a massive opportunity
Evervault is all of these sort of independently interesting businesses, but as a company, it really only comes together in years nine and ten
There’s a deep respect for the difficulty of the challenge, an excitement around the opportunity to package and commercialize the most cutting-edge tech in the simplest way, and a humility about the fact that the best they can do today is not the best there will ever be, which is expressed both in words and in the product’s modular architecture.
Fresco Funding 🍽️ A $20 million funding round and a rebrand in April for Fresco (formerly Drop) is an exciting next step for the Irish smart kitchen company. The company offers a neutral platform to connect smart kitchen appliances and is looking to leverage this money to grow their team and develop its digital platform and partnership network.
Fresco are looking to tap into a growing smart appliance market as we all look for our kitchens to talk back to us and teach us to cook more than scrambled eggs
The company are looking to double their workforce with significant hiring in Ireland and may be attractive given their software and hardware play
Elkstone and EIIS 🦌 Elkstone the prominent family office launched a new €100m fund with a focus on seed and pre-series-A funding.
This fund looks to leverage recent changes in Budget 2022 to the Employment Investment Incentive Scheme (EIIS)
Elkstone have brought in three new “superstar” venture partners to drive their investment strategy and success
As the global funding landscape begins to shift in the face of macro global events it is positive to see Irish companies will continue to be backed to pursue their ambitions
A verified ID in Web3 🧑 An Irish start-up is looking to leverage NFTs as next-generation digital ID cards. Pfpid are an exciting new start-up with a great founding team that are looking to solve the need for verifiable identification while avoiding excessive centralisation in the growing Web3 space.
NFTs (Non Fungible Tokens) have suffered from some derision in recent months which makes this an exciting project as it looks to attach utility to the technology
The tension between a Blockchain community that value anonymity and this new project that seeks to leverage it will be interesting to play out if the company continues to grow
The price of success 😨 Adrian Weckler wrote some very interesting pieces during April in the Independent one of which reflected on a growing two-tier society based on the techies and the not.
Could a perfect storm of the return to offices, cost of living crisis, and continued FDI job announcements lead to increased social division?
Equally, could Ireland be running out of road for attracting talent inward as reflected in a fairly scathing medium article on Ireland and in the rise of remote work and need to attract people as well as companies?
Early-stage funds 🤑 Delta Partners announced a new €70m fund to back seed and early-stage start-ups during April. They are looking to address a gap in the Irish funding landscape for early funding with an ambition to invest in more than 30 companies in the coming years.
As with Elkstone it is positive to see funds looking to specifically target early stage companies and back the ambitious founders of the future.
Manna in Europe While focusing on delivering Broccoli in Balbriggan at the moment Manna is looking to expand internationally in 2023 by first targeting Europe and then the United States. In Europe, they have identified six European markets and 70 locations while they are waiting on regulatory changes and approval in the US to get things kicked off in that most important of markets.
When competing with Google/Wing and Amazon things can never be certain but Manna continue to excel and chase this most ambitious of targets.
It is encouraging to see Ireland at the vanguard in Europe in enabling Manna refine their offering
As with all big ideas, it will be telling in how Manna can crack markets outside Ireland to achieve their ambitions
Conjura cashing in 🔥 Having seen its spin-out Wayflyer accelerate to Unicorn status Conjura has raised a significant €15 million Series A. The company has an AI-driven analytics tool giving companies comprehensive visibility across their e-commerce operations.
Conjura is looking to capitalise on the e-commerce tailwinds emerging from the pandemic
Their path from services through to product is one I see more companies following as they seek to understand client painpoints and be embedded before building a solution
Funding 💰 As usual April saw a number of companies raise money at various stages. Some that caught the eye included Trustap, Umba, Clarity CX1 and Pineapple. Meanwhile &Open secured financing and Aylien are currently seeking it out to support their growth. Along with the big raises for Fresco and Conjura mentioned above it was another healthy month of announcements.
Jobs 👔 April saw a number of job announcements across Irish and international companies (Additionally, the first person contacted me who took a role based on this newsletter so who knows what role you could find in the below)
If there are any roles/ job announcements you would like me to share in the next edition feel free to reach out.
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My Story and The Land’s Background
👋 To quickly introduce myself to anyone new … My name is Seán. I am in my late 20s, I was born and raised largely in Dublin so apologies if my capital bias may sometimes show up.
I work in a start-up within the tech industry and believe that the Irish ecosystem is a dynamic one for a small country. With COVID and too much time on my hands, I decided to create this newsletter to capture the biggest stories and provide some commentary and thoughts of my own.
Thank you for taking some time out of your busy lives to read!
💬 Contact me: thelandsst@gmail.com
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Cheers,
Seán