BRINGING 15 entrepreneurs together for six months under the watchful eye of business mentors might sound like another reality TV show, especially when there is the promise of financial reward at the end of it, but it turns out to be a fast-track programme for start-ups currently under way in Co Kerry, writes IAN CAMPBELL

Endeavour, a joint venture between businessman Jerry Kennelly, Shannon Development and the Institute of Technology in Tralee, is a boot camp designed to fill the gaps in the education of technology start-ups.

As one participant puts it: “I’ve done the MBA and been taught about entrepreneurship by people who have never started their own business. Here, I’m listening to entrepreneurs who know first-hand about the pitfalls that everyone goes through.”

The absence of a pragmatic support system has been a real problem for start-ups in Ireland, according to Kennelly. “Generally speaking, people don’t have a clue and spend two or three years in start-up mode because they don’t know what to do next. They are quite poorly informed about the markets they are trying to get into.”

He acknowledges the role Enterprise Ireland plays but says the agency lacks the authority and experience to help start-ups make difficult commercial decisions. This is where the Endeavour mentors come in. They are experienced entrepreneurs who treat their “students” like senior staff and set them tasks with tight timelines.

A recurring theme of the programme is the pursuit of global customers, something Kennelly understands better than most. In the late 1990s he grew Stockybyte, his digital picture agency, into an international brand and sold it in 2006 for €110 million. One of his concerns is that few Irish businesses have followed the same path.

“There is a lack of global e-commerce success stories out of Ireland. The online market has been around for over a decade now and we still haven’t managed to crack it with a global brand,” he says.

Part of the Endeavour remit is to teach tech start-ups, and not just e-business ventures, to think big. The selection process, which whittled 500 applicants down to 15, included a rigorous assessment of their idea. This assessment still continues, with regular stress-testing sessions of the participants’ business plans.

“You have to hone your pitch and it can be very gruelling,” says Donncha Haverty, who is there to advance the development of HKPB Scientific, a medical devices company.

“You’re up one day and down the next,” says Gráinne Barron, who won a place on the course to develop her digital content company, Foxlight Media. “You keep coming up against obstacles that you have to get around by being agile and flexible.”

Diarmuid Brennan is looking for guidance to take his computer animation business, iKitSystems, to the next level and is happy to face hard truths. “They push hard and that’s the only way to do it. They will take your idea apart but in a constructive way,” he says.

Kennelly makes no apology for the bad cop treatment to which the start-ups are subjected. “A lot of the time they don’t need a pat on the back, they need a kick in the ass,” he says.

Having been selected for the programme, the start-ups work out of office space in Kerry Technology Park and attend regular workshops as well as one-to-one sessions with business leaders including Jacob Fruitfield executive chairman Michael Carey, Daft founder Eamonn Fallon and Jim Breen of PulseLearning.

Participants relish the chance to get close to people who have “been there and done it” and are prepared to take time out to share their approach to business. “They are very customer focused, which is good for us,” says Haverty.

“From a technology point of view, you learn that you don’t talk about the features, you talk about the benefits.”

For Brennan, it has already led to a change in strategy. “Most of my business to date has been online. Being here has highlighted the importance of going through retailers and then looking for sales agents and distributors.”

Barron says core messages are drilled into the participants. “Your idea has to be scalable and it has to have something that differentiates it,” she says. “After the first week I had loads more ideas and none of them are hare-brained; they’re all based on market growth and statistics.”

The objective is to have the start-ups armed with a solid business plan by April, when they will get the chance to take part in a pitch for venture capital.

“We’re trying to encourage them to develop something that is not more of the same. It has to be disruptive and deliver real benefits to customers. Profitability and jobs will follow if they get the core right,” says Kennelly.

He emphasises that raising investment is not the main goal and says it is an overrated part of starting a business.

“Lack of money is rarely an absolute roadblock. It may slow you down and force you to take a slightly different path but a lot of businesses can fund themselves if they are clever about it.”

But are entrepreneurs born rather than made? Kennelly answers by making a distinction between the art and science of running a business.

“It would be terrible if someone failed because they were lousy at cash flow or didn’t understand intellectual property. That’s the science of business, which we can teach them,” he says.

“But the passion and enthusiasm is the art and that’s something you can’t teach.”