Every year, a cohort of committed and ambitious entrepreneurs embark on Phase 2 of New Frontiers, Enterprise Ireland’s national entrepreneurial development programme at the Rubicon Centre, MTU.
Showcasing the strong entrepreneurial drive that exists in Cork, this year’s start-ups are developing businesses in the environmental, software, medtech, robotics, healthtech, gaming, edtech, and lifestyle goods sectors.
For the first three months of Phase 2, the training focuses on equipping the promoter for the ups and downs of the entrepreneurial journey, working on mindset and resilience, customer discovery to truly validate their market and product, as well as design led thinking, sales training and building their network within the start-up ecosystem. There is regular contact with the Local Enterprise Office, Enterprise Ireland, the European Enterprise Network, Intertrade Ireland and Cork BIC.
Participant feedback shows that the support and encouragement between participants is a big feature of the programme and the network that is built amongst participants both on their programme and with others throughout the country is invaluable. As a founder, life is very different to being an employee, so the opportunities to talk to people who’ve been on this journey themselves and understand the challenges are invaluable. Particularly useful are the sessions with former alumni of the New Frontiers programme such as Patrice Fanning who started TWI, Pat Lucey of Aspira and Frank Madden who founded Crest Solutions, now Catalyx, and all had successful exits. Equally encouraging are the opportunities to talk with recent alumni such as Mike Keane of Hibra Design, and Kate & Becky Popova of Everywhere English who are still on the journey.
(Front Row R-L) Amel Sami of GlishArabic, Roy Kelleher of Slainte & Ailleacht Natural Bee Products, Patrick of eBee, Paula McGovern of Wizard & Grace, Kevin Beirne of Gabro Games, Eoin O Riordan of Origin Xero
(Back Row R-L) Banu Balaji, Donal Moynihan of ClearSight Decision Support Systems, Matthew Knight of The Feed Ducks Initiative, Carolyn Houlihan of Ostomy Cube, Elvis Seporaitis of Volta Robotics, John O’Flynn of LA Edit, Emily Murphy of The Mind Mechanic
Not pictured, Mark O Driscoll of DiOpsy Ltd & Rory O Neill of DeliverAI.
Photo. Darragh Kane
