How Three’s Grants for Small Businesses proved a big success for ByoWave

Could your business do with a boost? With its Grants for Small Businesses fund Three Ireland can help with an injection of capital.

Applications are now open for its grants fund, an annual €100,000 initiative that sees 10 businesses awarded a grant worth €10,000, made up of a €5,000 in cash plus a further €5,000 offered in Three solutions and products.

Padraig Sheerin, Three Ireland’s head of SME, leads this year’s judging panel, which also includes Sonya Lennon, entrepreneur and advocate for workplace equality; Siobhán Finn, national hub network manager for CEAI; Marine André, head of performance at Enterprise Nation; and Michael O’Dea, senior development adviser, high-potential start-ups, Enterprise Ireland.

“We were blown away by the calibre of applicants last year, and I’m really looking forward to being part of the judging process again this year,” Sheerin explains. “At Three, we have seen first-hand what the grant can do, the feedback we’ve had from last year’s winners has been extremely positive. They have made incredible strides and I am so happy Three has been there to support them in the next stages of their journey.”

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Winning this grant proved invaluable to Galway-based ByoWave, a maker of modular controllers for gamers with disabilities. The ByoWave Proteus controller allows gamers to personalise their controller to meet their individual needs.

It is the brainchild of co-founders Brandon Blacoe and Eibhlin O’Riordan, whose history of gaming goes back to their time in pre-school together. “Our parents set up playdates for us and we’d play Shrek,” says Blacoe.

Now in their mid-20s, the pair remained avid gamers over the years but they had lost touch with each other, going to different schools and colleges. Blacoe studied biomedical engineering in UCD and got a master’s degree in electronic engineering, while O’Riordan studied game design at TU Dublin.

As grown-ups they reconnected by chance at a game jam event in Dublin, where participants were divided into groups and challenged to develop a game in 72 hours.

‘Many people have disabilities that prevent them from engaging with what is now a cornerstone of our cultural lives – gaming’

Both Blacoe and O’Riordan see gaming as an important social activity. “During lockdown, when we weren’t allowed to meet people in person, so many of us turned to gaming. You could just pop on a headset and make friends globally,” he explains.

“For me, it’s an activity that can help you destress. Growing up, it was a safe space whenever I was super stressed about something, whether it was a swim meet, an exam or a teen disco. When I play video games it lets me think more easily and stops me trapping anxious thoughts. People can also learn a lot about art and culture from gaming, in a fun and interactive way,” he adds.

But O’Riordan has Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, a connective tissue disorder, and after injuring her hand found it hard to use a standard gaming controller. Having reconnected, they decided to work on the issue together.

“What was interesting to us was how little anyone knew about just how many people have disabilities that prevent them from engaging with what is now a cornerstone of our cultural lives – gaming,” says Blacoe.

Their own research indicates that 180 million people worldwide “can’t access games because of a physical disability, simply because the actual thing we hold and touch – the controller – wasn’t designed for them,” he adds.

Wins like the Three Ireland Grant for Small Businesses help to ease the mind of investors, when they see that a big company like Three has put its brand behind us

It was a problem in search of a solution and the pair decided to provide it. Working out of an attic room, they reached out to gamers with a disability online, through the platform Reddit.

“It’s one of the things that helped us progress our business really fast, because there were tens of thousands of people crying out for solutions,” he says. They began designing custom-made controller shells, printing them out on a 3D printer, and posting them off to individuals.

Then they had an even better idea.

“I remember sitting in the attic thinking, how are we going to scale this thing up? And then I thought, what about a Lego-inspired brick that simply clicks together?” he recalls.

If the pair could develop such bricks, with magnets, people could piece them together in a way that suited their disability. O’Riordan built the first one to accommodate her own needs. She configured it in such a way that made no sense to Blacoe but worked like a dream for her. That’s when they knew they were on to something.

Winning the grant from Three Ireland enabled them to develop a commercial prototype. “It meant that we had something to hand out to people. It showed investors we were not just sitting around drawing pictures, we had something physical to show potential investors,” he says.

That in turn helped to kick-start a hugely successful funding drive, which has saw ByoWave raise more than €500,000 in pre-seed funding. It already has follow-on funding available of more than €2 million. Today ByoWave is partnering with one of the biggest names in computer peripherals and plans to donate free controllers to accessibility organisations around the world.

It’s a perfect example of how the right supports, at the right time, can act like a pump primer for business.

“For the first 18 months it was wins like the Three Grant for Small Business that kept us going. But what the grant from Three also does is help to ease the mind of investors, because a win like that is immediate due diligence for them. It makes them more comfortable investing in something when they see that a big company like Three has put its brand behind it,” he explains.

“Three’s investment was particularly helpful when the product is something very different, as ours is. Also, when you are young, and investors feel you have less experience, having the Three brand recognition behind you really helps.”

Byowave.com

Three’s Grants for Small Businesses 2022 programme is now taking applications until 2nd October. Find out more at three.ie/business.