Six Irish startups went to New York to network and pitch for a week. This is what happened.
Six Irish startups that met at Trinity, went through LaunchBox, Tangent’s Student Accelerator, and received help and support from Bank of Ireland, travelled to New York in October for the inaugural Tangent Pioneers programme.
The Tangent Pioneers worked for one intensive week in the heart of the New York startup scene, basing themselves in the Bank of Ireland Innovation Lab in Midtown. During the week, in addition to setting up customer and investment meetings, they pitched to the Digital Irish; learned from Enterprise Ireland about taking their startups global; had office hours with Techstars and Blackstone VC; and got a sense of what it is to work, network, and lead a startup in the US.
From a mix of industries and backgrounds, the Tangent Pioneers represented Trinity, and Ireland on a global stage for the first time. Here they describe their experiences of the week’s work.
Sebastian Kuehn, co-founder & CTO, Work Smarter
For us, a successful trip would mean a positive reception of our concept here in New York and I’m happy to say that we’ve been able to achieve that so far. While we’re not ready to scale out to the US market but it’s valuable feedback to know that there is potential for us here. Meeting businesspeople in New York has definitely underscored what we already know – Ireland is a small market, but it’s an excellent testing ground and a great place to start. For the pitch events we’re participating in, we adjusted our numbers to reflect the US market. It’s a great feeling to have such massive numbers up on the screen.
“I can highly recommend grabbing a coffee and watching the city slowly wake up.”
New York surprised me in a very positive way. The city
