🥛 Glass half empty or half full?
August was a mixed month as we saw the negative impact of global and economic situations mixed in with some good news stories for indigenous Irish tech and start-ups
Welcome to the 13th edition of “The Land of Saints, Scholars, and Techies”!
Check out some of the stories below that you might have missed in August!
After a summer hiatus, we are back and looking to grow through the rest of the year and into 2023. There is a changing landscape from the market we experienced through 2021 and early 2022 so it will be interesting to see how things pan out in Ireland
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The Stories
Protex AI 🦺 Young Irish start-up Protex AI, a workplace safety company leveraging artificial intelligence and computer vision technology to protect employees, raised an €18 million Series A from a number of notable investors.
With a large Series A and past experience as part of Y Combinator Protex AI are certainly a company to watch into the future as they look to grow further.
It is massively positive to see an Irish company with a real AI and computer vision use case and demonstrates that these companies can be founded and built here in Ireland. It will be interesting to see what other bleeding edge companies like Protex AI emerge in the coming years.
Funds continue to raise 💰During August we saw Furthr/ DBIC announce the growth of one of their funds to €32 million from an initial €23 million. Similarly, Tapestry VC announced new €50 million funding to support current early-stage investments and a new growth fund.
Futhr are targeting scaling software and medical device companies with a combination of upfront and follow-on funding. Meanwhile, Tapestry VC are targeting software, fintech, and breakthrough technologies.
While the rhetoric around funding and access to money has shifted in recent months with changes in the global landscape we can still see VCs and funds are managing to raise and there is and will be still money in the market for good companies with the right mix of components for success.
If you are interested in learning more about the other players in the VC space in Ireland check out this profile of the top VCs in Ireland.
Startups looking to accelerate 🆕 August saw the launch of a new cohort of the NDRC accelerator. Six new companies have been chosen to be supported over the course of the six months as they bid to scale and prepare their start-ups for funding.
The six companies come from a variety of domains. You can check them out here - Examfly, Chopcast, Tipple, Moveahead, Tracworx, and Terrabyte
This is the third cohort of NDRC since its move to Dogpatch and previous cohorts can be explored here and here. As you would expect some have moved faster than others and some may be making big waves in the years to come.
Empty office space 🏢 New work-from-home policies, hiring freezes in Irish offices, and wider tech sector lay-offs have overhauled the activity of tech firms in the Dublin office market leading to companies pulling out of deals and much discussion on the health of the market as a whole.
August saw stories emerge from various companies including Tiktok and Twitter discussing reducing office usage. This does not come as a surprise given the slowdown in the global economy and ongoing remote working trend.
It will be essential to understand how much of this is caused by hiring slowdowns and layoffs versus a reassessment of office space needs in the wake of increased remote and blended working models.
There is good debate about what this all means with some analysts suggesting the market is still in a good place and others with a more pessimistic view. Ultimately, much will depend on the length of any recessionary period and how these companies look to use or sublet space.
Not a clear success 👋 Clearco announced in August they would be pulling out of Ireland only months after they came to these shores. Clearco are a fintech from Canada offering revenue financing to e-commerce companies similarly to Irish sweetheart Wayflyer.
Only months after announcing 125 new jobs in Ireland, Clearco is exiting the market to focus on operations in North America with 50 jobs being lost as a result. We have to hope that this is an exception and that more companies don’t mimic their actions in the months to come.
The current economic climate is leading to pain in the market as companies look to downsize or rightsize and pull back from previous decisions. Despite this, there is still hiring happening in other companies so it is hard to see how this will all pan out.
A real glow-up 🏋️August saw Glofox announce their acquisition by ABC fitness solutions with a figure around the 200 million mark being mentioned by many. Glofox have built a fitness management platform offering everything from customer acquisition to billing management, and business intelligence to member engagement.
The acquisition comes on the back of an announcement of 150 jobs early this year and should be seen positively about this growth continuing even with the roles being open to remote.
Glofox are part of a growing ecosystem of Irish companies looking at health, fitness and sports performance including Statsports, Kitman Labs, Output sports, Legitfit and others. There may yet be another sporting front where Ireland is able to punch above its weight.
Manna flying high 🛩️ Drone delivery company Manna Aero is planning further expansion, targeting the US later this year and announcing plans to move into Europe in 2023. I covered much of this in the May edition but it is positive that there is no sign of slowdown despite a changing global landscape.
The drone delivery company says that it will soon start servicing an unnamed large Dublin suburb with a market of 100,000 people following Oranmore, Moneygall and Balbriggan.
The expansion follows a $25 million (€24.2 million) funding round in 2021 that the company said would fuel its international growth.
While Manna are excelling and looking to accelerate their growth they are competing with some huge companies such as Wing from Google who have their own ideas and plans for drone delivery
Funding 🤑 Even with a global slowdown in funding August did see a few companies raise money at various stages. Some that caught the eye included Thriftify, Equine Medirecord, 3D Issue, ETU, and Channelsight, . Along with the big raise by Protex AI and the exit from Glofox as well as Our Tandem it was still a positive month on the whole.
Jobs 👔 While the news cycle mentions layoffs and consolidations which is certainly a reality there are still companies looking to hire
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