Taking the pain out of organising group events

UCD Innovation Academy graduate Darragh Kirby has won this year's Accenture Leaders of Tomorrow competition for the Groopeze (groopeze.com) online group travel and activity booking platform. "Groopeze reinvents the whole process of online group bookings making it easy and hassle-free to plan, manage and pay for groups booking online," he explains.

Leaders of Tomorrow is aimed finding and nurturing leadership talent among Irish third-level students. The award will enable Kirby and his business partner Shane Murphy to continue to develop Groopeze through a place on National Digital Research Centre (NDRC) Launchpad programme for digital start-ups. They will also be able to avail of an Accenture-funded trip to Silicon Valley later in the year.

The idea for the new software platform came about through another business which Kirby was working on. “We were looking at organising stag parties as a business in itself,” he says. “And when we saw what was involved in that we realised that there would be a gap in the market for building a platform to take a lot of the hard work and complexity out of it.”

Enter computer science graduate Shane Murphy. “Shane graduated just a little too early to be able to enter the competition, so the entry went in just in my name,” Kirby points out. “I am chief executive of Groopeze and Shane is the chief technology officer.”

“I had worked on a few start-ups in areas like music technology and games before joining up with Darragh to develop the Groopeze platform,” says Murphy.

According to Kirby, users are amazed at how simple the platform makes the process of booking a group’s accommodation, transport, activities, attractions, events, and so on. “A group organiser can book accommodation, decide what events and activities they want the party to go to during the day and at night, book them, and invite all the group members to them. Group members can then decide which events they want to go to and pay for them. They can opt out of any that don’t interest them.

Stags and hens

“Because we negotiate a fixed rate with venues the price won’t vary if the numbers go up or down. This takes the headache out of trying to collect money from group members or dealing with complaints from people who would prefer to do something else. With everyone taking care of themselves the group organiser’s job is made an awful lot easier.”

The Groopeze platform is currently being used by thestagsballs.com and thefoxyhen.com. “In using the Groopeze platform these websites are revolutionising the way the stags and hens of Ireland are organising their last nights of freedom,” says Kirby.

They decided to enter the Leaders of Tomorrow competition as a result of seeing it mentioned online. "I think we saw it mentioned on a Facebook post," Kirby recalls. "We decided to enter it. Accenture is a very large and well respected organisation and with the NDRC and Irish Times on board as well it is clearly a very high calibre competition."

They found the competition process valuable in itself. “When you get through the first two rounds you get to participate in two development days with the NDRC and Accenture”, Kirby points out. “The NDRC helped us develop the business idea further ,while the Accenture day focused on us as entrepreneurs. Both days were brilliant. Gary Leyden in the NDRC was a great help in terms of stripping back the business and looking for any flaws. We learned a lot from that.”

“The quality of the applicants gets better and better every year,” says Accenture Ireland country managing director Alistair Blair. “The commercial aptitude and business nous we see among the applicants has improved enormously over the eight years that we have been running the competition. And their attitude to risk and failure is hugely refreshing. They see failure as a badge of honour. If the idea doesn’t make it they just take it away, revise and amend it, dust themselves off and start again.”

He believes Groopeze is an example of a very technological idea which has been made to work commercially. “The interesting thing is that there are other similar things out there in the marketplace,” he points out. “What they have done is segmented the market and targeted a particular element of it. They are aiming at things like stags and hens and family events which are not necessarily organised by a professional and taking the headache out of it. It is very finely targeted and that’s what makes it work.”

Potential partners

But the award is not just for having a good idea. “The other side to this is what makes a good leader,” Blair explains. “It is not just the ability to have a good idea; it is the ability to apply it and build a business around it. Darragh has done that. He is a real leader; he oozes confidence and has a lot of charisma and presence. He has that ability to bring people along with him. Those are the traits we want to encourage in Ireland as we seek to foster entrepreneurial talent.”

Several other applicants were of a high standard this year. “There were certainly three or four entries which could have won in a different year”, Blair notes. “But the great thing about them all was their attitude. One of them came up to me after the final and said that not winning wasn’t a problem; taking part in the competition and the development days was worth it.”

Kirby and Murphy are now looking forward to continuing the development of the Groopeze business. “We’re talking to a number of potential partners at the moment and we will be working with NDRC on it as well,” says Kirby. “Accenture is willing to help with their expertise as well and that’s great. We also have the internship in Accenture to fall back on if things don’t work out and that’s very good to have.”