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Gary Leydon, programme director, NDRC
This is the third LaunchPad programme. It’s been running for 18 months now and its focus is simple – to hot house digital media start ups to the point of bearing fruit.
“Each programme receives around 50 applications. It’s a competition from the very start. We take in on average 10 companies,” says Leyden, “and they receive €10k each. We receive about 6% in the equity of each company for that.”
The companies are then put through an intense 12 week LaunchPad programme. “The people involved are normally excellent when it comes to tech skills and programming, our role is to set actual business targets. Each company must validate its business potential,” says Leyden.
Following the 12 weeks of beta testing, customer testing, business validation and development, each company then pitches their idea to a room full of investors. A €60,000 equity fund stands as the winning prize. “The winner is often the company that produces the best pitch on the day and the one that can show the investors solid commercial validation.”
The winning company then goes on to prepare itself for another round of seed funding and this time the cash on offer is usually in the €200-300k realm. “There is no shortage of serious investment money for serious ideas and good commercial ideas in the digital media space,” says Leyden.
DETAILS
The third NDCR LaunchPad ‘LiftOff’ competition will be held on May 4 at Crane St., Dublin 8 from 9am-12.30pm.
Each of the nine competing start-ups will pitch to an experienced panel including Brian Caulfield of DFJ Esprit, Shay Garvey, Delta Partners and HBAN Angel Investor of the Year Conall Lavery from TechExecs Syndicate. The winner will be announced on the day. Networking opportunities will take place following the winning announcement.
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