Innovators offered chance to build own start-ups

POTENTIAL ENTREPRENEURS are being given the chance to develop their own high-quality start-ups with the support of a new intitiative.

The pilot project is the brainchild of Pearse Coyle, who has already been involved in the early commercial development of successful Irish technology companies such as Eurologic, Iona Technologies and Peregrine/Exceptis.

The idea for the scheme came out of Mr Coyle’s own experience. At Exceptis, a technology that was originally developed for AIB was subsequently sold to 12 banks throughout the world.

Mr Coyle said the intitiative aims to “flush out” those who have developed a technology or service that could be applied to other firms and sold on.

Targeting the insurance and banking industries at first, the scheme will investigate and test the market for such technology and help promote those projects and individuals it feels are promising, spinning them out into a new company in co-operation with their present employer.

Anecdotal evidence uncovered by Mr Coyle indicates that there are potential start-ups out there, waiting to be discovered. He said some of the ideas from academic insitutions were ahead of the market. “Typically they don’t solve a business problem,” he said.

Other start-ups, in contrast, had the technology but not the customer base. “There are certainly some areas that would be considered core that the present company wouldn’t let out,” said Mr Coyle. “Generally there is quite a lot of stuff developed that is non-core; and even with the core stuff, you may be able to take it out with certain limitations, for example, not selling to rivals in Ireland.”

Mr Coyle will lead the initiative. “My primary role is going to be the initial filtration of the opportunities that come forward and in particular the market assessment. The assessment is the key element that unlocks it,” he said.

Despite the downturn, Mr Coyle doesn’t anticipate a reluctance to get involved. “It is all the more difficult to tempt people out of stable situations at the moment, but with the scenario that we’re trying to create here, I think we can mitigate that risk.” Often these ventures are only going to be viable, he says, if attractive terms can be negotiated with the employer, such as leave of absence or the ability to return to the company.