Start-ups get flying start in Limerick as reputation continues to grow

Limerick’s growing start-up community is hoping that recent announcements will help strengthen the city’s attractiveness as a location for fledgling entrepreneurs.

The unveiling of an ambitious strategy for research and innovation by the University of Limerick has among its targets plans to increase the number of spin-out companies by 25 per cent.

UL’s Excellence and Impact 2020 strategy also aims to establish entrepreneurship training for all staff and students and expand enterprise boot camp activities for second- and third-level students

Notwithstanding UL’s initiative, Limerick Institute of Technology on the other side of the city is also continuing its focus on enterprise and innovation at the Hartnett incubation hub with initiatives such as the New Frontiers programme, a national entrepreneur development programme that enables innovative business ideas to develop and succeed.

Shane McCarthy, chief executive and co-founder of BlueChief Social, a social media start-up located in the Nexus Innovation Centre in UL, considers Limerick as one of the most attractive locations in Ireland for start-ups.

“The launch [of the strategy] has an automatic impact on places such as Nexus, which is becoming the epicentre for start-ups in Limerick. There are shockwaves coming across Limerick for start-ups and Nexus is really vibrating those out,” he says.

“Limerick is getting better, there are more start-ups but the only thing we have to improve on is getting more high potential start-ups that are going to scale internationally.”

Challenges

The biggest challenges the 26-year-old sees for start-ups are access to talent pools and finance.

“The Government needs to put an infrastructure in place that works for start-ups and that shouldn’t be decided by people who don’t have experience in start-ups. You have people making decisions who are brilliant corporate people and who have vast experience in dealing with large scale enterprises, but start-ups are not like that,” he says.

Established in 2012, BlueChief Social has grown from two to eight full-time employees in the past 18 months.

The company helps clients build international brands and also trains university staff in NUIG, UCD and UL on how to utilise social media to engage better with students.

McCarthy is also founder of the Wild Atlantic Start-up which he describes as a “collaborative ecosystem for start-ups” stretching from Cork to Donegal.

This June, he is planning to run Ireland’s first entrepreneurship festival in Limerick.

“We have had opportunities to move to Dublin. We have had opportunities to move out of Ireland, but we want to create the correct infrastructure and ecosystem in Limerick for companies like us and also for companies that are going to follow us,” he says.

Limerick businessman Pat Carroll has been involved in a number of start-up community events over the past few years including Google for Entrepreneurs, Startup Weekend and Startup Grind Limerick, a networking event where he hosts monthly "fireside chats" with successful local entrepreneurs.

"I believe Limerick as a location for start-ups is well placed to benefit from our economic recovery. To an extent Dublin has become a victim of its own success, firstly as rental prices have become prohibitive for start-ups, anywhere near to the city centre. Also, particularly, in the technology space, talent is now in short supply, due to the big tech companies like Google, Facebook, etc employing a lot of people qualified in developer and programmer-type fields," Carroll says.

“On the other hand, in Limerick, city centre, property is relatively affordable, and it is in the city centre where start-ups want to be, not in industrial estates. Also, with the great third-level establishments of UL, LIT and MIC, an annual renewable stream of talent is available for start-ups to draw from.”

Peter Hunt, co-founder of Piggyback, a heat-mapping application for taxi-drivers and city managers, is also based at the Nexus Innovation Centre in UL. After a stint in San Francisco the 24-year-old Clare man came home and developed an app which aims to make the taxi-driver fleet "as fluent and efficient as possible" by assembling data which helps taxi-drivers to identify demand ahead of time.

“Originally I joined a US based start-up because I wanted to get back to the US but as it’s transpired I really like it here . . . There is a lot of support for start-ups in Ireland. We will be looking to raise money soon so that will be the next step for us,” Hunt says.

The Piggyback app works off open-sourced APIs and assembles data in a way that taxi-drivers can look at their mobile phone screens and understand where demand is going to happen ahead of time.

As the app is more suited to larger cities, the company’s three target locations in the next 12 months are Dublin, London and San Francisco.

There are currently 30 start-ups working out of the Nexus Innovation Centre, which was established in 2011 as an incubation space for entrepreneurs seeking to develop new business ideas.

The facility is described by manager Gert O’Rourke as a “transient environment” in which fledging companies can incubate. It’s estimated that about 50 start-ups have worked out of the centre since it was established.

Camaraderie

O’Rourke believes there is a great sense of camaraderie for start-ups in Limerick but thinks the city needs more events like last year’s Start-up Gathering; a series of nationwide events aimed at promoting entrepreneurship and the development of regional start-up hubs.

“There’s a great social sense of camaraderie for start-ups in Limerick that I hadn’t seen in other communities. But it needs joined-up thinking. The Start-up Gathering was the first event that I have been to in Limerick where all agencies were in the same place at the same time,” she says.

“Limerick needs more initiatives like that. Whether you want to be or not, you are forced into being part of it . . . It’s about keeping that sense of community there whether you like what you are hearing or not.”

Speaking at the launch of UL's new research and innovation strategy, Dr Mary Shire, vice-president of research in UL, said it was critical that Irish start-ups were supported by the Government.

“We are an export-led country; we are heavily reliant on our multinationals, so we do need to diversify to protect our economy moving forward.

“During the downturn we realised where we had too much focus on one single sector; therefore it is critical that the country invests in Irish small to medium- sized enterprises who have a focus on and can expands our jobs; it basically spreads our risk a lot more and we have the opportunity to do that. Certainly as a nation creativity is instilled in us and developing this moving forward is critical from a Government perspective and from a UL perspective.”

Minister for Skills, Research and Innovation Damien English, who launched UL's ambitious new strategy, said it was "essential" that there was more Government investment in incubation hubs across the country.

“These incubation hubs are where it happens. This is where you get the real innovation, because you are bringing the best brains together. I would say innovation is about smart people with smart money and that is what you get in these hubs, because people are coming together, people are working in teams and developing partnerships both inside the university but also with other businesses,” English says.

“We have a lot of companies based here [UL]winning for the country and that’s what we want to see. We want to see more start-ups and spin-outs.”

Other key targets of UL’s five-year Excellence and Research 2020 strategy include increasing the number of PhD students, doubling European research funding, a 30 per cent increase in the number of publications in top journals and a 20 per cent increase in research income from industry.

* This story was corrected on Tuesday, January 19th.