On March 8th 2020, International Women’s Day was celebrated worldwide. With that in mind this week’s blog post is going to be dedicated to some of the most notable Irish female entrepreneurs. The following women have paved the way for others in their respective industries and their businesses are a testament to their dedication to the sectors in which they operate. Here in the Rubicon we offer many services to help entrepreneurs begin on their own journeys. One of these programmes, ‘Exxcel‘ is directly targeted at women who operate within the STEM sector and more information can be found at the end of this post.
Mary Anne O’Brien
A brand recognised in every Irish household is ‘Lily O’Briens Chocolate’. The founder of the business Mary Anne set up the business in her own kitchen in 1992 and chose to name her business after her daughter ‘Lily’. She along with her husband Jonathan Irwin are also responsible for setting up the ‘Jack and Jill Foundation’ in 1997, following the death of their son Jack. In order to ensure her chocolate was of the highest of standards she learned from some of the greatest chefs and chocolatier’s across Europe and South Africa. Initially the business was run from her home kitchen in Kildare with her creations being shared with family and friends. From there the business expanded with the brand being sold in over 16 countries worldwide. In 2018 Mary Anne made the decision to sell her confectionery business for €40 million, while still maintaining the position of Director and Company Consultant. To this day the production of the brand remains where it all began in the heart of Co.Kildare. As well as being involved in both Lily O’Briens and the Jack and Jill Foundation, Mary Anne was a senator in the Seanad due to her involvement in the business and charity sectors.
Fidelma McGuirk
It was Fidelma’s own personal experiences that led to her setting up her latest venture, ‘Payslip.com’ in 2017. Having played a part in setting up operations in over 21 countries for 20 years she noticed that finding a company to organise a payroll was both complicated and time consuming. The security of data was an issue that she noticed was prevalent in many of the products that they utilised in each country. As someone who was directly experiencing the downfalls of what was on offer in the market she was aware of the limitations that businesses were facing. After establishing that this was an issue, the idea for Payslip presented itself. Payslip is a cloud platform that allows for businesses to manage their global payroll, data, resources and vendors all in the one place making it easier for companies that operate on a global scale. Having an effective payroll is something that McGuirk knew was essential for a business. The technology she has devised will ensure that businesses now have one less thing to worry about when it comes to the retention of data and the expansion of a business.
Dr.Patricia Scanlon
Dr. Patricia Scanlon founded her company ‘SoapBox Labs’ in 2013. The idea for ‘SoapBox Lab’ stemmed from watching her oldest child use an app that was teaching her how to read. Patricia noted that the app had no way of assessing if her daughter was in fact learning anything as it helped her to read. Having over 20 years’ experience in Artificial Intelligence and Speech Recognition, Patricia realised that she could effectively create a solution for this obvious gap in the market of similar apps. The app she created allows for children’s speech and pronunciation to be assessed and features personalised learning to support young children as they learn to read. By using a large volume of voice data from children the app works for children between the ages of 4 – 12 as the majority of voice recognition apps created to date use adults voice data and therefore do not provide an accurate user experience for younger users. In 2018, Patricia was included in the Forbes ‘Top 50 Women in Tech’ ranking. The business has seen continual growth over the past seven years with it’s latest venture including a $30 million investment from The Florida Center for Reading Research.
Exxcel is a part-time programme aimed at busy female entrepreneurs who have a business idea with high growth and export potential, within the STEM sector (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths). Delivered over six months and working around professional and busy life commitments, participants undertake modules on different business topics on seven Saturdays at the Rubicon Centre. Topics include Business Strategy and Planning, Finance and access to grants and loans for women, Sales and Lead Generation, Branding and Communications, Digital Marketing and Presentation Skills. Participants are supported by on-going, one-to-one mentoring and coaching, with the opportunity to remain in full-time employment, whilst validating their business ideas with their mentors and the Programme Manager. Each participant will write an investor-ready business plan by the time they successfully complete the programme. The Exxcel programme is funded by Enterprise Ireland.
