Irish technology start-ups aim for stars with Lift-Off

The LaunchPad programme recently had its Lift-Off graduation day for fifteen digital start-ups. JOE went along to catch it.

The National Digital Research Centre’s LaunchPad programme has been a big success in providing support to new, innovative digital and tech start-ups.

The programme provides guidance and mentoring to entrepreneurs with nascent ideas, puts them through a rigorous Rocky-style training regime to shape them up into investable start-up companies.

The last graduation day gives all the start-ups the opportunity to pitch to high-profile investors and venture capitalists, the winner this year went away with a €50,000 investment.

JOE went along to the Dragon’s Den-style event to catch up with some of the start-ups including SlateState, BOSS Metrics, Popdeem and eventual winners of the €50,000 investment, Soundwave.

We also spoke to tech-start-up guru Josh Holmes for his thoughts and for once there’s some stuff to be positive about in the Irish economy with tech-entrepreneurs looking to lead the recovery

The Irish programme starts again with new tech start-ups in a few weeks’ time in the meantime you can read about the most recent graduates here:

Bizimply

A mobile platform for entrepreneurs to keep tabs on their different outlets.

Bossmetrics

A digital and social media marketing platform that gives reports on social media productivity and automates how SME's report, analyse and plans their online activity.

Dropcar

Booking software for the car share industry, aims to do what Dublin Bikes did with cars throughout the world.

Instant Opinion

A real-time communication channel between service providers and their customers and helps resolve issues as they occur.

Jumpzter

A travel forum and application that helps kids explore the world.

Learnupon

A cloud-based learning management system.

My Power Back

An online mental health platform.

BuildingEye

A format that takes open source planning data and compiles it into one effective map for personal users and businesses who want to know what building is going on around them.

Popdeem

A social commerce platform that links brands and communities through their social networks and organizes them through the hype they generate.

Pharmapod

An international platform that helps pharmacists comply with local and EU legislation, allows greater productivity and shares best practice and knowledge amongst peers.

SlateState

A dashboard that allows teachers to see what their students are doing on their iPads in the classroom, while delivering analytics to educational publishers.

Sneaky Vegetables

A series of games that shows kids how to draw freehand and other skills.

TruePivot

A cloud-based engineering tool that simulates stresses and deflections on designs and allows for worldwide collaboration on projects.

Soundwave

A music data analytics service that allows users to find and what tracks are being listened to and where and provides analytics to the music industry.

Ex-Ray Lab

A portable surgical simulator that allows surgeons to perform full x-ray guided procedures on realistic, synthetic flesh and bone and doesn't require the use of radiation.