Founder Episodes

Brian Kenny is the CEO and Founder of MiniCorp. Brian left the Lego behind at an early age and started building through code. We go deep into how Brian thinks about leading MiniCorp and what makes MiniCorp unique, how his modus operandi has evolved during his career in tech, the critical task of tr…

Gerard Tannam, Strategic Brand-Builder at Islandbridge, tells us all about the use of storytelling as a framework in bridging the gap between buyers and sellers, businesses and their markets. In this episode, we weave through Ger’s own story that takes him from Ireland to Hong Kong and back again, …

Ankur Mohan, Founder & CEO of MarketXLS, joins the show to share his story on his entry point into Galway in the West of Ireland to launch MarketXLS, how a certain demographic just prefers the simplicity and control of Excel for managing personal and professional portfolios, closing the gap between…

Ernest Cantillon (CEO of DramEx) and Brian Elders (Founder of SORS Digital Assets and advisor to DramEx) join the show this week to talk about DramEx, a community governed digital whiskey marketplace. We get into the genesis of the DramEx business through Ernest’s life story as a hospitality entrep…

Achia Nila, Founder & CEO of Women in Digital, joins the show to share her story on Women in Digital, an all-star team of female technologists dedicated to bringing more Bangladeshi women into the digital economy. In this chat, we get into Nila’s earliest inspirations, proving herself and becoming …

Mark Boylan, CFO at Trustap, joins the show this week to share his story about his leap out of Big 4 and into startup life, finding the right distribution channels to get Trustap into the end users’ hands, the benefit of strong relationships with your early investors, what’s next for Trustap…and be…

This week we welcome back Andrew Mullaney, CTO of Premind AI, sharing his story on the last 2+ years of building Premind, streaming 57,000 stock prices into a million news stories a day, the impact of high-speed information flow on age-old market theory, the differences between his last startup New…

Oli Cavanagh and Charles Dowd, the co-founders of Strike, tell the story of the confluence of experiences and ideas that brought them together to launch Strike, getting a product live and raising an angel round in less than 3 months, the benefit of having done it before when you need to build a tea…

This is a special bonus episode welcoming back Ollie Walsh, co-founder and CEO of Pipit Global, a for-profit social impact fintech based in Galway here in Ireland. Ollie was on the show back in July 2019 in episode 52, and as Pipit's crowdfunding campaign on the Spark Crowdfunding platform here in …

Mike Cavanaugh, Managing Partner at Regiment Alpha, shares his story on lessons learned in the open outcry commodity trading pits, his multiple entrepreneurial ventures amidst a life in fintech, having things thrown at him for saying ‘blockchain’, advising and helping to raise investment for fintec…

Fiona Edwards Murphy, co-founder and CEO of ApisProtect, shares her story on channeling her technology expertise into a passion for helping beekeepers, her transition from academia into the life of a startup founder, raising ApisProtect’s first round, building a customer base looking after 20mn bee…

Barry Darmody, founder and CEO of Search4Less and ENKI, shares his story on the life experiences that were the catalysts for him becoming a startup founder, getting the Search4Less product to market in the early days, keeping the faith through the lean years, making yourself expendable through buil…

Robert Alice, artist and creator of the ‘Portraits of a Mind’ project, shares his story on how bitcoin - and to quote Robert – “and its essential ties to the past instead of the perpetuated perception of its radical severance with it,“ was a catalyst for a melting pot of inspiration for his mesmeri…

Cian Prendergast, founder and CEO of Ortus joins the show to share his story on the origins of Ortus in Ireland, sharing his story on how there’s a lot more to providing cloud and managed IT services to SMEs than what you’d expect, entrepreneurial leadership during a pandemic, surrounding yourself …

On the show this week we’ve got Gerry Fahy and Andrew Quinn with the story of the PAT Group and PAT Fintech, the Irish opportunity with the growth of fintech and regtech, achieving product-market fit in learning and education, and teaching the way you would have loved to have been taught.

Deborah Brock, founder and CEO of Nua Fertility, joins the show to share her story on the origins of Nua Fertility in Ireland, why it made so much sense to add in educational elements and a community ethos to the value proposition, finding global partners….and rugby as an analogy for startup life!

Yoann Turpin, co-founder and Head of Business Development at Wintermute, joins the show to talk about the parallels between competitive swimming, derivatives trading and crypto, creating liquid markets for digital asset trading platforms, cross-pollination of business opportunities across the digit…

Matt McAllister from Mortgage Propeller joins the show to talk about bringing a new fintech to life in the middle of a pandemic, buying a house with a credit card, making lives easier for mortgage brokers and borrowers, talking to your customers way before they become your customers, life lessons f…

Brian McDonald from Bay Advisory joins the show for Part 2 of a 2-part series on M&A and raising capital for entrepreneurs and talks through the logic of exit plans, focusing on outcomes rather than actions when taking money off the table, balancing your gut instinct with valuations, the tendencies…

Brian McDonald from Bay Advisory joins the show for Part 1 of a 2-part series on M&A and raising capital for SMEs and talks through the intersection of experiences that drove him to launch Bay Advisory, market trends impacting early-stage entrepreneurs in Europe, and helping entrepreneurs think abo…

Brian McNulty, founder and CEO of FundAdminChain (FAC), joins the show to talk about solving a real business problem with distributed ledger technology (DLT), how funding your business takes a team effort, enabling positive change for the investment funds industry and end investors…and his secret l…

Allan Boyle, founder of Saltwater Consulting, joins the show to talk about helping growth-stage companies scale, putting people at the center of digital transformation, how to get to the root of a problem…and his love-hate relationship with handwriting!

Elisabeth Dana from Infinity Circle joins the show to talk about how a career in wealth management inspired her to start all over again to build a business centered on client needs, how to be be both digital and transformational, first reflections on Infinity Circle’s crowdfunding campaign and the …

Chris Burge from Spark Crowdfunding joins the show to talk about two-sided marketplaces, the differences between crowdfunding for B2C and B2B companies, his own transition from the life of an energy consultant to that of a crowdfunding platform operator….and the long-term benefits of stag weekends!