Growing up in Ireland, almost everyone had an uncle, cousin, or family friend who moved to America at a young age, established a good life for themselves and visited "home" every once in a while.

These individuals often carried an aura of mystique, perhaps due to their softened accents, lack of paleness, and whirlwind holidays to Ireland. Could these diluted Irish-American accents be overtaken by Irish-Australian twangs by 2050? (Scarily, only 26 years away 😱).

In the last few weeks alone, two prominent Australian news outlets (articles attached) have covered the incredible surge in Irish travellers and professionals who moved to Australia in 2023.

Between July 1, 2022, and June 30, 2023, the Australian Department of Home Affairs granted 21,525 working holiday visas to Irish citizens, more than double the previous year's allocation of 10,491. Living on the ground, I am incredibly confident that the 21,525 number will easily surpass the 2023 statistics.

Remarkably, these figures do not cover the thousands of professionals who come over with a job and visa already secured or anyone from Northern Ireland with a British passport. To put this in perspective the United Kingdom was granted 38,177 visas in the same period, despite having a 13x population difference.

The extent of this exodus is outlined by Paul Minton, who founded Lemon Talent, a successful recruitment company specializing in placing emigrants in sought-after professional services roles:

Moving to Australia is certainly not a new thing, especially for professionals. There is an incredible network of executives and start-up founders like Paul who have already achieved so much.

However, given the burgeoning trend of Irish people moving to Australia, will it (or has it already?) overtake the United States as the premier location for Irish emigrants?

Housekeeping 🧹

As mentioned before the Christmas break, we are moving the extremely popular Founder Focus series to a standalone fortnightly newsletter, allowing us to go much deeper into these amazing stories.

First up we have Cian Mcloughlin Founder of Trinity who is based in Sydney Australia. Keep an eye out for it!

In place of Founder Focus, we have included a new feature - 🧠 DIA Brain Food, a quick weekly roundup of DIA-related wins, trends, events, media and resources that we think you’ll like learning about.

Our first feature at the bottom of this email included an incredible podcast between Irish acting sensation Paul Mescal and Louis Theroux. Check it out!

Some More Exciting news to kick off 2024! 🥳

The DIA team is expanding. 🚀

Chris Mullan has joined the editorial team, taking the lead in content curation on our Instagram and Twitter pages, as well as providing some much-needed strategic growth advice.

A recent first-time father, Chris is based on the Gold Coast and works as an experienced Solution Manager at one of Australia's largest retail BWS brands, having emigrated from Ireland nine years ago.

Moonlighting as my big brother, he's been offering strategic advice (mostly suspect!) for around 30 years, most recently in the attached picture where he attempts to demonstrate the correct way to BBQ a steak.

This Weeks Dispatch 📖

We have some incredible stories of Irish innovation from The UK, NZ, the USA and a Belfast cleantech securing global partnerships:

• Irish-Founded Marama Labs Secures €1.75 Million in Oversubscribed Seed-Plus Round 🇳🇿 🍷

• Belfast’s Nuada Cements Global Growth 🏗️ 🌎

• ufurnish.com: Deirdre McGettrick's Grand Design for UK Domination 🇬🇧

• Try and Stop Us: US Sportstech Leader Converts with Andrew Trimble’s Kairos Acquisition 🇺🇸

Enjoy! ☕

Irish-Founded Marama Labs Secures €1.75 Million in Oversubscribed Seed-Plus Round 🇳🇿 🍷

Marama Labs, a New Zealand deep-tech startup revolutionising liquid analysis, has successfully closed an oversubscribed seed-plus round, securing a substantial €1.75 million in funding.

The company-patented CloudSpec spectroscopy instrumentation and cloud software data analytics tools have been pivotal in accelerating the analysis of opaque liquid samples, such as fermenting wines and nanomedicines.

For winemakers, CloudSpec is a game-changer as it provides previously unavailable quantitative chemical data throughout the winemaking process, from vineyard to bottle. The company was founded by physicists Dr Brendan Darby, Dr Matthias Meyer, and Prof Eric Le Ru in 2019.

DCU graduate and Irishman Brendan Darby has been in Wellington since moving there to undertake a PhD in Physics in 2012. The passionate scientist has been instrumental in raising investment and growing the Marama team from 2 to 10+. He is bullish about the business's plans for the future:

H/T 🎩: Marama Labs website

Belfast’s Nuada Cements Global Growth 🏗️ 🌍

Nuada, the groundbreaking carbon capture business, has recently entered into strategic partnerships with four major global cement companies across four continents:

Holcim (🇦🇺)
SCG (🇹🇭)
Cementos Argos (Colombia)
Cementos Molins (Spain)

These collaborations mark a significant leap forward in Nuada's mission to decarbonize the cement industry and contribute to the Global Cement and Concrete Association's 2050 Net Zero Concrete Roadmap. It's also an incredible example of a Northern Irish company making an incredible impact in every corner of the globe.

Founded by Jose Casaban and co-led by Conor Hamill, the company quickly gained traction thanks to its next-generation Metal-Organic Framework (MOF) technology. This tech tackles the cost, energy, and integration challenges that plague traditional carbon capture methods, making it perfect for hard-to-abate sectors like cement.

"Innovation in carbon capture is vital to slashing costs and enabling wider adoption," says Dr. Casaban. "Nuada redefines the game by delivering a solution that makes CCS projects economically viable, paving the way for a greener future.”

In 2023, Nuada closed a $10 million Series A investment round, led by powerhouse investors BGF, Clean Growth Fund, and Barclays. The company currently employs 52 staff, with the vast majority based at their Belfast headquarters.

Looking forward, Nuada's vision extends beyond cement. Their MOF technology holds immense potential for revolutionising carbon capture across various industries.

With continued innovation and global collaborations, Nuada is poised to play a pivotal role in building a cleaner, more sustainable future for all.

H/T 🎩: The Irish News

ufurnish.com: Deirdre McGettrick's Grand Design for UK Domination 🇬🇧

Deirdre Mc Gettrick, a native of Co Sligo and founder of ufurnish.com, a startup rapidly emerging as the UK's largest furniture retailer comparative service, has fortified its war chest with a £500k investment from Rob Pierre. The serial British entrepreneur turned TV personality joined Ufurnish.com’s advisory board not long after they raised an impressive £3.4 million seed investment in 2023.

Ufurnish.com is a free platform for consumers, showcasing products from 180+ furniture retail partners, including notable names like John Lewis, Airbnb, and Santander.

Its innovative approach ensures unbiased search results and follows a commission-based model for retailers. In Deirdre's own words, the platform is “a lead generation for the retailers,” positioning it as the “Booking.com of the furniture retailers.”

Deirdre's background in banking and finance, with stints at JP Morgan, BNP Paribas, and HSBC, laid the foundation for her entrepreneurial skills. Illustrated by Ufurnish.com’s shareholder register, which is devoid of VC investment.

The startup has been entirely funded by McGettrick’s black book, including notable figures like Pat McCann, co-founder of the Dalata hotel group, and Tony Smurfit, chief executive of Smurfit Kappa.

Looking ahead, Ufurnish.com is gearing up for significant expansion this year and with new investment and experienced advisors, they look stronger than ever.

H/T 🎩: Business Post

Try and Stop Us: US Sportstech Leader Converts with Andrew Trimble’s Kairos Acquisition 🏉

Teamworks, the US-based enterprise SaaS company specializing in sports technology, has successfully acquired Belfast-headquartered Kairos Sports Tech. The acquisition (£15 million), announced by Teamworks Founder and CEO Zach Maurides, positions itself as a strategic step toward transforming and unifying sports technology under the vision of "The Operating System for Sports."

Established in 2018, Kairos was founded by former rugby star Andrew Trimble and Gareth Quinn. The platform has quickly become a force in global football and rugby, boasting a customer base of over 700 organizations as of 2023. As part of the acquisition, Teamworks has welcomed twenty new Kairos employees, including the founders who see the acquisition as a natural progression in their growth:

“The decision to join Teamworks is a strategic move to align ourselves with the leader in sports technology and one that shares our vision.

"Although we didn't realize it, from 2021 onwards, Kairos was already partnering with Teamworks. We were collectively informing pro sports teams worldwide that a dedicated communication solution was a 'must-have' to harness high performance.”

It's great to see another Irish sports tech making waves globally, and the acquisition follows closely in the footsteps of the success of Irish sports techs like Glofox (acquired by US HQ’d ABC Fitness), Kitman Labs, and Stat Sports, who have had incredible successes in the United States in recent years.

H/T 🎩: RTE

🧠 DIA Brain Food

Here is your quick serving of Digital Irish-related wins, trends, events, media and resources that we think you’ll enjoy digesting 🍽️:

🎙️Paul Mescal - Louis Theroux Podcast: Irish actor Paul Mescal discusses the impact of Hollywood fame, dealing with paparazzi, and how acting is the love of his life

🗞️ - Enterprise Ireland hunts for hidden unicorns - Financial Times: Europe’s most active venture capital fund has a €500mn budget to help Irish businesses grow

🗞️ - Can Ireland's startups learn from French push to boost La Tech? - The Independent

 📝 - The Hottest Startups in Dublin - Wired: The Irish capital is excelling on “pick and shovel” companies that help other businesses get stuff done.

Do you have any pieces that you think the DIA community would love to read about? Reply to this email and let us know!

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