It’s been a topsy-turvy kind of week in Irish tech, with some huge wins and big embarrassments in the space and banking industries.

Plucky Ireland will enter the space race a mere 66 years after the Russians sent Sputnik I into space in 1957.

The EIRSAT-1 satellite was designed, built and tested at UCD and will travel to the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California where it will be sent into orbit on November 29. A truly impressive feat and a win for Irish innovation.

Conversely, the 2.5 banks that we call the “Irish banking sector” failed to get their instant payment app off the ground. The planned app called Yipaay, which aimed to rival Revolut has been beset by delays, challenges and €17 million in costs.

With the acquisition of 2.2 million Irish customers in just eight years. Revolut’s rapid expansion was likely the driving force behind Yipaay's development. Its failure will create further opportunities for Revolut to disrupt the traditional banking sector, particularly among younger generations.

Further from home, the Sam Altman OpenAI debacle has gripped the tech community this week. In a rapidly evolving situation with an absurd number of twists and turns, the simplest and most comfortable way for me to cover what has transpired is to lean on an area of personal comfort in the form of a Simpsons meme:

If you are interested in getting in finding out more, I would recommend checking out The Interested Normie’s Guide To OpenAI Drama.

This Weeks Dispatch 📖

We have some incredible stories of Irish innovation across four continents including an interesting Founder story from Australia:

• Founder Focus: Brian O'Farrell, Co-Founder & CRO at Furthr 🇦🇺

• Imprint Leaves Its Mark: Irish-Founded Co-branded Credit Card Startup Raises $75M 🇺🇸

• Oisin Hanrahan's Key to Success: Unlocking €16.8M for Keychain 🇺🇸

• Patrick Coveney: The Rugby-Playing, Sandwich-Making CEO with Global Ambitions 🌎

• Swooping into Success: Irish Firm Gives South Africa a Funding Boost 🇿🇦

Enjoy! ☕

Founder Focus 🔎

Brian O'Farrell, Co-Founder & CRO at Furthr

Company Description📝

Furthr is a Card-Linked Loyalty Platform built on the existing payment infrastructure of card schemes and payment processors. We have partnered with 400 online and in-store brands across 1,600 locations offering cashback to customers all built into their existing bank cards, so every time they spend at those brands they automatically earn an average of 5% back to do more of what they love and increase their brand loyalty so it’s a win-win.

We partner with 20+ Publishers (Banks, FinTechs and consumer-facing apps) who have over 4 million customers helping them do more of what they love from saving money, donating to charities, investing in stocks or crypto, sponsoring their local sports clubs and more.

Company Location 🗺️

We are Headquartered in Sydney but we have people living in Melbourne, Dublin, India and sometimes in Campervans just keen to mix up their office. 

Company Stage 🚀

We raised a $1.5m Seed round in 2022 from AfterWork VC and a bunch of incredible Angel Investors from Segment, PayPal, Stripe, DataDog, Rothschilds and more, who’ve acted as an extended team which we are incredibly grateful for.

Company Origin🧑‍🍳

I intended for it to be a Travel App as my business partner Nathalie Mann and I weren’t born in Australia and personally every year I was met with a dilemma…

I was lucky enough to be able to save for one holiday a year and had to choose between adventuring for fun which I found rejuvenating, or visiting my friends and family back home in Dublin for Christmas. Home won every time.

But I always wished for that adventure, so we thought if we could build an app to solve many things travel-related, including the ability to save 5% on everyday purchases, I hoped to fund the additional days or weeks of travel.

Our founding team consisted of a small but remarkable group of individuals from within the travel industry. This tight-knit team, driven by a shared passion, were eager to bring our vision to life. While, like any startup, we've faced our fair share of challenges, the journey has been overwhelmingly positive and filled with excitement.

What Does it Mean to be an Irish Founder Abroad? ☘️

Exciting, you get this inner feeling when you are out of your known environment trying to build new networks and want to make your friends, family and old teachers back home proud. It's also a reminder that those D's and E's in school don't define your potential; what matters is the passion and determination you bring to what interests you. 

Australia has been an amazing support network on top of all the Irish out here, everyone has been helpful beyond belief, wanting to help you succeed, and offering words of wisdom.

To be honest, I never thought about being an entrepreneur and one day found myself a little lost career-wise, I spoke to my two Irish friends I moved over with who said: “Why don’t you do something yourself, you can do this!” My brother said “Go fail, you’re gonna learn so much it’s a win-win” so that day I just decided to give my own thing a crack.

If it was possible, what's one bit of advice you would tell yourself when you first emigrated?✈️

Work with people you love to work with and know what you are selling inside out. But at the end of the day work is work - rejuvenate, have a sauna, walk, swim and laugh but don’t make every day about you.

But always try and get home to the Emerald Isle as often as you can to see your amazing family. 💚

Imprint Leaves Its Mark: Irish-Founded Co-branded Credit Card Startup Raises $75M 🇺🇸

Irish entrepreneur Daragh Murphy's startup Imprint has gained recognition for its approach to rewards allows for more personalized offerings than traditional bank cards, fostering increased customer loyalty and spending.

They recently secured $75 million in a Series B funding round, raising its valuation to $240 million. The funds will aid the startup in expanding its services to larger corporate clients and pursuing its goal of managing more customer rewards.

When talking about the raise Daragh emphasized the importance of loyalty in the business, "What we're selling the brand is loyalty. If you put a card in a person's wallet, they will come back to your brand more".

Hailing from Clane, Co Kildare, Ireland, Daragh began his journey by studying law at University College Dublin before making his mark in New York. He graduated from Duke University School of Law and gained admission to the bar in New York. Subsequently, he worked as VP of operations and strategy at WeWork.

H/T 🎩: Medium

Oisin Hanrahan's Key to Success: Unlocking €16.8M for Keychain 🗝️

The serial Irish entrepreneur based in New York has raised a whopping €16.8 million in heavily oversubscribed seed funding for his latest venture, Keychain, along with former Angi CRO Umang Dua.

In a landscape where $500 billion worth of packaged products is produced annually by over 20,000 manufacturers, Keychain is on a mission to revolutionize the Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) supply chain. Their AI-powered technology brings unprecedented clarity and convenience, streamlining processes for brands in this vast and fragmented market.

A Trinity College Dublin alum, Oisin's journey started with co-founding Handy HQ, a platform that reshaped the home services sector, culminating in a nine-figure exit to Angi and eventually taking over as CEO.

For Oisin, success is intricately tied to his Irish heritage. 🇮🇪 He emphasizes, "Building and fostering relationships is the core of what it means to be Irish. I wouldn’t be where I am today without my experience growing up in Dublin."

H/T 🎩: Business Post

Patrick Coveney: The Rugby-Playing, Sandwich-Making CEO with Global Ambitions🌎

Patrick Coveney relishes a hearty competition. Not long ago, he outperformed Pano Christou, Pret A Manger's CEO, in a sandwich assembly contest at Zurich airport. Coveney's expertise in sandwich production draws from his prior role as the CEO of Greencore, the leading sandwich maker globally.

Coveney, based in the UK, envisages propelling SSP into the FTSE 100 by boosting profits in the ensuing three to five years through ambitious global expansion plans:

Raised in a traditional Catholic family, Coveney studied first at the University College Cork (UCC), then at Oxford via a Rhodes Scholarship. His father, Hugh, was a construction entrepreneur before transitioning to politics. His brother, Simon, might ring a bell too.

A fondness for rugby threads his life, from playing for the UCC, Munster U20, and Ireland U21, to the London Irish during Clive Woodward's tenure as coach, who led them to a Rugby World Cup victory.

Given Patrick’s experience, I wouldn’t bet against him growing their 2,700 outlets and 35,000 employees globally.

H/T 🎩: The Times

Swooping into Success: Irish Firm Gives South Africa a Funding Boost 💰🇿🇦

Swoop Funding, the Irish-founded global business funding solutions provider, has just launched in South Africa with the support of industry leaders Sage and Enterprise Ireland. 🌍

Founded by Andrea Reyolds and Ciaran Burke, Swoop Funding is an international platform that helps businesses get funding more easily. Their goal is to enable every firm and stimulate economic expansion by providing them with easy access to a wide range of financial sources, such as grants, equity investments, and loans.

Since its inception in 2018, Swoop has expanded to Ireland, Australia, Canada, The United States and now South Africa.

The expansion follows a recent partnership announcement with Accounting software giant Sage, which will see Swoop power up Sage accountants and Sage business owners with access to finance across all their global locations.

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