Dublin start-up Tapastreet secures €500,000 in funding

Photo and video discovery platform Tapastreet has secured €500,000 in funding as it seeks to bring the technology to a wider audience.

The Dublin-based company offers a map-based system with photos taken recently from around a location and uploaded publicly to social media.

Founded in 2012 by former Intel engineer Joe Mitchell and former Google employee Dave Johnson, the company is hoping to take advantage of the growing demand for social media networks worldwide to develop the product.

The technology has already been demonstrated at TechCrunch Disrupt 2013, where Tapastreet showed its Android and iOS applications.

The investment comprises €250,000 by Kernel Capital through the Bank of Ireland Seed and early Stage Equity fund, and the remainder from Enterprise Ireland.

"We are excited to partner with Kernel Capital and Enterprise Ireland to bring this technology to a wider audience," chief executive Joe Mitchell said. "When showcasing Tapastreet at TechCrunch Disrupt 2013, Mike Butcher, editor of TechCrunch Europe, said Ireland punches above its weight in the world of startups. We are proud to be at the forefront of this climate of innovation."

The company has plans to stay at the forefront of that innovation. Working with Trinity College Dublin and the Institut National des Sciences Appliquées de Lyon, Tapastreet has developed a research project that will develop advanced image synthesis techniques and location-based artificial intelligence machine learning algorithms to work with the company's core product.

Partner at Kernel Capital Ger Goold said the company brought a “unique proposition” to the market by allowing users to crowdsource media through social networks.

Enterprise Ireland’s high potential startups manager John O’Dea described it as an “innovative business that has the potential to be a game-changer for mobile content discovery”.

“Entrepreneurial companies like this are hugely important to the Irish economy and we look forward to working with them as they grow their business,” he said.