It is one of the most exclusive clubs in the world, but there are no Jimmy Choo shoes, membership fees or handbags at dawn at this club, whose members consist of the best and brightest young entrepreneurs and innovators globally.
They have founded companies, been invited to speak at the White House and the World Economic Forum, been selected as Collegiate All-Stars by Forbes magazine and written books and yet they are all under 30. And now, the Dublin hub of the Sandbox network is re-opening membership applications for young tech titans and business moguls.
The network allows no more than three people worldwide to join each week, and there is a rigorous application and referral process. The Dublin-hub closed the application process several months ago after reaching 15 members.
Described as the foremost global community of young innovators and entrepreneurs, the Sandbox network was founded in Switzerland in 2008, and has since grown to over 750 leaders in more than 53 countries. More than 25,000 people have applied to be in Sandbox over the last three years.
And why wouldn’t they? Sandboxers have featured on the front covers of Wired, Fast Company and Forbes magazine. In fact, the 2011 Forbes selection of “30 under 30” included five Sandboxers.
The network’s founders believed the bright young people shaking things up in the tech, food, fashion, media and entertainment industries would be all world leaders in 20-30 years time, according to Dublin Sandbox ambassador John Egan.
Egan, who sold his first company aged just 20 and went on to found a further six organisations, said the Sandbox network was established so the global leaders of the future would not just be meeting when they were in their 50s, but would have already established relationships spanning more than 30 years while in their 20s.
“The high achievers now could be the movers and shakers worldwide in 30 years time and the relationships will have already been cemented,” he told a group of more than 60 including Sandboxers and star-struck prospective members at a Sandbox open evening.
With 23 connected hubs around the world including London, San Francisco, Nairobi, Bangalore, Beijing and Zurich, the network identifies exceptional young people and helps incubate, accelerate and power their visions. The Dublin hub of Sandbox was launched in April and has 15 members, said Egan, who added the network will never surpass 20 members.
Award winning director, founder of Studio Rua and SuperQuest creator Padraig Mannion told the crowd of savvy businessmen and women at the open evening he joined the Sandbox network after finding he had no-one in his peer group to discuss business problems with.
“I set up my own company five years ago and it was really difficult as I had no one in my peer group to talk to about paying taxes, being sued, paying employees PRSI.”
His fellow Sandboxer Will McQuillan, whose entrepreneurial talents are no end, found no problem big enough for the network with everyone willing to help everyone else.
Sandboxers have been known to post messages on the network’s forum looking for people to connect them with everyone from Bill Clinton to Somali pirates, and nothing ever proved too difficult for them.
The 27-year-old Dubliner co-founded online fashion marketplace Osmoda, start-up accelerator Betapitch and more recently his own private equity firm called Frontline Ventures.
McQuillan is part of the London network of Sandbox, along with fellow Dubliner and Fabsie co-founder James McBennett. McBennett’s start-up was a semi-finalist at the Dublin Web Summit reaching the final 16 from 1,000 entries.
Among the international members of Sandbox are Suhas Gopinath, the world's youngest certified professional web developer, who launched CoolHindustan.comat the age of 14, New York City's chief digital officer Rachel Sterne and Soraya Darabi, co-founder of social-dining app Foodspotting and former manager of digital partnership and social-media marketing at the New York Times.
Members of the Dublin hub of the Sandbox network include Kooky Dough founders Sophie Morris and Graham Clark, Katie Tsouros, curator of art initiative KTContemporary, O’Leary Analytics founder Stephen O’Leary and Sasha de Marigny of the Undergraduate Awards. Ms de Marigny, who co-founded a performing arts school at the end of 2009, said potential Sandboxers have to submit a “Wow” item as part of their application process to the network. This can be anything from a video, to a comic strip, to a pop-up book, but it must make the founders sit up and say “Wow”.
She submitted an event pitch as her Wow factor, which detailed an idea for an event to bring the various Sandbox hubs closer, and increase links between them. The event will now be implemented, taking place in Dublin next year, with more than 2,000 Sandboxers from around the world expected to attend.
“They want to get to the essence of who you are as a person. You have to say what projects you’ve worked on, what businesses you’re involved in, what your goals for the future are.”
The former actress is part of the all-female trio running the Undergraduate Awards, an international academic awards programme celebrating the research of the world’s most exceptional undergraduates.
And what do they do at the Dublin hub of Sandbox? “We host a lot of problem solving sessions, pitching sessions (where we help fellow members with their pitches for funding) and regular meet-ups,” says de Marigny.
“We’d be in contact all the time bouncing ideas off each other. They are helping me think of really cool ideas for the Undergraduate Awards summit. We also support each others’ businesses. For example, when Kate Tsouros opens an exhibition at her gallery, we all go along.”
Founding father: the Dublin connection
* Entrepreneur John Egan founded the Dublin hub of Sandbox in April after being introduced to the network by Sandboxer Niamh Hughes
* Prior to the formation of the Dublin hub, there were four Irish Sandboxers including Egan, but none were based in Ireland
* Egan is the founder of The Archie Talks, The Daedalus project, EnergySolve, Curia and Archipelago, a community of young entrepreneurs in Europe
* Egan sold his first company, Underground Safety Services, aged 20 and has set up six more
* Egan, now 27, divides his time between Dublin and London, is a partner at Red Thread Intelligence and sits on UCD’s Innovation Academy board of studies
* Egan was one of the winners of the European Ashoka/BenJerry’s ‘Join our Core competition’ and is a finalist in the David Manly Awards for Social Enterprise
