Vicky O’Donnell is the founder of Wilder Wander, an astonishing mobile game that gets children out into Nature to explore the wonders of the world.
I grew up on a farm in the Wicklow Mountains, loved the great outdoors and from an early age I always wanted to work with animals, so when I left school I studied zoology and animal behaviour in TCD. I am sure I asked David Attenborough for a job at one stage and I managed to get some work with the wildlife filmmaker Éamon de Buitléar, finding pine martens for him to film in the West of Ireland.
But jobs in nature are scarce on the ground so I went back to college to study geo-informatics and spent the next thirteen years working in maritime research in UCC. I worked with data at all stages and, although the job was technical, the work was very applied so it was easy to see the value of data in decision making and the importance of data as currency.
While working at UCC in 2000, I saw an article in The Irish Times advertising jobs with Irish Aid’s Rapid Response Corps which sends experts to work in the initial stages of an emergency. All of the data/information skills that I was using in maritime research were directly relevant to working on the ground during an emergency so I decided to pack my bags and I worked with UNOCHA, UNICEF and UNHCR in the Middle East, Africa and Asia until 2015. Since then I have worked with the UN developing emergency toolkits and training courses for those deploying to humanitarian disasters.
“Our first game uses thousands of biological datasets which were collected over the last decade.”
The idea
In the summer of 2017, we started a family tourism business and were in the planning stages

Having worked in quality assurance for 18 years, Fionnuala Hendrick set up Secure Helping Hand (SHH) to help businesses prepare for GDPR. 

 
Secure Helping Hand was born because I wanted to create a simple, easy to use, low-cost application that will allow professionals and SMEs become compliant with and maintain compliance with GDPR.
What is GDPR in a nutshell?
GDPR is designed to protect an individual’s privacy in an expanding online world and will replace the Data Protection Directive which was written in 1998. Businesses will have to demonstrate the processes and systems they have in place to protect personal data which in turn will help to protect people against fraud. GDPR creates a legal framework for businesses to share their personal data, offering them a new level of protection and transparency that did not exist previously.
“GDPR requires a shift in how businesses deal with personal information.”
What impact will it have on businesses?
Firstly businesses will need to determine if they are a data controller, data processor or both, and whether or not they need to register with the Data Protection Commissioner. They will need to document what personal information they hold, where it came from and why they are holding it, who they share it with and how they secure it. Businesses need to be able to respond to personal information requests within 30 days and need to include all personal data that they hold.
There are strict requirements for the processing of sensitive personal data where businesses have to identify not only their legal basis for processing but also the legitimate interests in relation to the processing of each piece of sensitive data.
“76% of people will request their personal data from former employers”
What will happen when GDPR arrives?
It is hard to think of a business today that does not use personal data.

Enterprise Ireland’s €1 million competitive start fund (CSF) for female entrepreneurs is open on Tuesday, May 1.
Calling all female founders. A maximum of 20 successful female applicants will get up to €50,000 in equity funding.
You can apply here.
Last year, 46 percent of all companies who received CSF investment from Enterprise Ireland were female-led.
Getting female firms investor ready
As well as funding, 15 of the successful applicants will be offered a place on the INNOVATE accelerator programme, delivered by Dublin BIC. Taking place over a 12-week period in the Guinness Enterprise Centre, INNOVATE gets the participants investor-ready within a short period.
“We need to keep this momentum and grow these numbers so that we see more women confidently starting new businesses and successfully scaling existing ones.”
Growing these numbers
“We made a commitment in 2012 to female entrepreneurs in this country to increase supports dedicated to them, and we did this in response to the low number of female-led startups receiving investments and supports. Six years later the breakdown is encouraging,” says Rachael James, female entrepreneurship manager, Enterprise Ireland.
“More than one in three start-ups supported by Enterprise Ireland last year through the High Potential Startup programme and CSFs were led by women, compared to just one in ten start-ups in 2012. However, we need to keep this momentum and grow these numbers so that we see more women confidently starting new businesses and successfully scaling existing ones.”
For more details and how to apply, go here.
 

Niamh Bushnell the CEO of TechIreland says it is her mission to “tell the tale of innovation in Ireland”. Another mission is to make sure female founders have better access to funding.

TechIreland, for those who may not know, is a platform that tracks innovation across all 26 counties in Ireland.
“We track what companies are innovating in each county, what their strengths are, what progress they are making, who their customers are, what their business model is, and what supports and funding they received (if any). Users of TechIreland can also request an introduction with the companies they are interested in,” explains Bushnell.
The information available on TechIreland has many useful applications.
“It’s useful for anyone interested in innovation in Ireland, whether that be business founders, investors, startups, job seekers and FDI firms,” says Bushnell.
“We want this book to land in front of global decision makers and influencers.”
TechIreland uses public sources to build the business profiles on the site and also produces reports.
“We produced our first annual report on Irish innovation in January 2018 and it’s been downloaded over 1,200 times since,” says Bushnell.
From this report came a coffee-table book, Innovation Nation. It was dispatched by the Department of Foreign Affairs to Irish consulates and embassies all over the world for St. Patrick’s Day, 2018.
“We want this book to land in front of global decision makers and influencers,” says Bushnell. “It features over 100 companies we’ve been tracking during the year and shows people that these are Irish companies, building and expanding out of Ireland.”
“Many cultural changes need to happen in Ireland before there is equality in the startup scene.”
More places at the funding table 
Bushnell and her team also recently launched a year-long campaign called the €100m Campaign.
“There was just €79.4m secured by female-led startups in 2017 in comparison to the €580m we’d

J.P. McMahon owns three restaurants in Galway including Aniar which is one of the few Michelin-starred restaurants in Ireland. He spoke to ThinkBusiness at the recent Galway Food Festival.
How did your career take off?
I started cooking when I was 15 years old and I studied home economics in school. I think I chose home economics because I had asthma so it was either that or wood work. I got my first job immediately after my Junior Certificate working in a kitchen which I really enjoyed. I studied English and art history in college as a mature student and never actually studied culinary arts. I did a PhD in art history and taught the subject for ten years  in Cork. My wife and I had always dreamed of opening our own restaurant and we got our first chance with Cava more than ten years ago.
How did you fund and start your business?
We didn’t really know what we were doing when we opened the restaurant or how to run a business. We couldn’t get a bank loan so we had to beg, borrow and steal to gather €80,000. As my wife always says, maybe I am a stubborn self-believer, but we are a bit more cautious now. Even with ‘Food on the Edge’, we started that with no funding and I just invited the chefs to come along. I offered them flights and accommodation to attend the event. 
How did Food on the Edge develop?
It came from travelling. I attended a few chef auditoriums and week-long retreats. I thought to myself that we could do this in Ireland because we have really good produce, once we picked the right time to do it. I had one or two connections and I just started building on them. Sometimes if you wait for the perfect moment to

J.P. McMahon owns three restaurants in Galway including Aniar which is one of the few Michelin-starred restaurants in Ireland. Here he talks about great Irish food and the quest for perfection. 
How did it all begin?
I started cooking when I was 15 years old and I studied home economics in school. I think I chose home economics because I had asthma so it was either that or woodwork. I got my first job immediately after my Junior Certificate working in a kitchen which I really enjoyed. I studied English and art history in college as a mature student and never actually studied culinary arts. I did a PhD in art history and taught the subject for ten years in Cork. My wife and I had always dreamed of opening our own restaurant and we got our first chance with Cava more than ten years ago.
How did you fund and start your business?
We didn’t really know what we were doing when we opened the restaurant or how to run a business. We couldn’t get a bank loan so we had to beg, borrow and steal to gather €80,000. As my wife always says, maybe I am a stubborn self-believer, but we are a bit more cautious now. Even with ‘Food on the Edge’, we started that with no funding and I just invited the chefs to come along. I offered them flights and accommodation to attend the event. 
“We didn’t open Aniar to get a Michelin star, we opened it to support Irish produce.”

How did Food on the Edge develop?
It came from travelling. I attended a few chef auditoriums and week-long retreats. I thought to myself that we could do this in Ireland because we have really good produce, once we picked the right time to do it. I had one or two connections and

Despite their age (19), US twins Mark and Andrew Ansell have already lived rollercoaster lives, going from being homeless at 14 to interning at some of the biggest companies in Silicon Valley.
When sitting with Mark and Andrew Ansell, it’s hard to imagine that these two enthusiastic and incredibly intelligent young men have lived their lives accompanied by regular struggle.
Currently, on a student exchange at Trinity College, from UC Berkeley in California, Mark and Andrew’s family became homeless in 2012 and spent more than a year moving around and receiving support before regaining stability. “Our family has always had some sort of financial struggle and that year was the climax of all of that. We arrived home one day and found an eviction notice on our door and as 14-year-olds we didn’t know what was going to happen,” says Mark. 

After spending four months living in a church, the Ansell family were relocated to a motel which is a period to forget for the twins. “That was a totally different experience because we used to come home from school feeling so embarrassed and hoping none of our peers would see us running into this motel room that we called home. It was a tough time,” says Andrew.
“We arrived home one day and found an eviction notice on our door and as 14-year-olds we didn’t know what was going to happen.”
Amazingly, Mark and Andrew were able to maintain their impressive academic record and chose to focus all of their energy on their school work. They now study mechanical engineering and business administration at UC Berkeley and are the only students in the college studying the two degrees simultaneously. “We applied to all of our colleges in search of mechanical engineering degrees, but we always wanted to pair that with business because our parents have

A €500,000 fund will provide up to €50,000 in equity funding for up to ten successful applicants.
Enterprise Ireland’s competitive start fund (CSF) for recent graduates will open for applications on Tuesday 10th April 2018.
The €500,000 fund will provide up to €50,000 in equity funding for up to ten successful applicants. The fund closes to applications at 3 pm on Tuesday, 24th April 2018.
The graduate entrepreneurship fund is to encourage entrepreneurship among graduates who run startups that can succeed in global markets.
Applications from final year students and graduates with a third-level qualification within the last three years are invited to apply.
“Graduate entrepreneurs can sometimes be overlooked.”
Crucial funding
“We have a pool of talented and ambitious entrepreneurs in this country, who are still in university or recently graduated and are making valuable contributions to the economy through their startups. For these entrepreneurs, supports like Enterprise Ireland’s competitive start fund are vital. Together with crucial funding, the initiative provides valuable business support and networking opportunities to innovative entrepreneurs and companies at the start of their journey, and provides a platform from which they can progress their business,” says Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation, Heather Humphreys TD.
“Graduate entrepreneurs can sometimes be overlooked; however, we understand the value of their ideas and their businesses to the startup ecosystem,” says Sarita Johnston, department manager, HPSU Start, Enterprise Ireland.
As well as written online applications, startups will be asked to prepare an online video pitch.
Full details of, and the application for, this graduate competitive start fund can be found here. 
Help is at hand
In partnership with Enterprise Ireland, Dublin BIC will host a free-to-attend CSF application support day on 17th April. Book your place here.

Related Resource

The best colleges for student entrepreneurs. 

Ireland’s first Fashion and Technology Startup Weekend sponsored by Bank of Ireland is coming to WeWork, Iveagh Court in Dublin on Friday, March 23 – 25, 2018. 
Ireland’s first Fashion and Technology Startup Weekend is coming to Dublin, supported by Bank of Ireland a long-term supporter of Startup Weekend across Ireland. Book your tickets here. 
That’s great, but what is FashTech?
FashTech is the intersection between the two industries of fashion and technology. Until now both industries have sat side by side one another, never fully grasping what the other side does. Technology today is having a transformative global impact and now looks to be hijacking the fashion industry.
When people are asked to think about fashion, thoughts come to minds such as clothes, identity, personal choices, comfort, protection and expression. You wouldn’t be wrong to think the same. As the rest of world rapidly moves with the times, fashion is only at the beginning of where we can see a tech cross-over.
Technology comes in to play as it looks to amplify your expectations of what the future of the fashion industry holds. Experience, usability, convenience, individualism and opportunities all emerge when fashion shows its open and collaborative side, where embraces and integrates new technologies.
So what does the FashTech landscape look like right now?
Think disruptive. Technology is now being woven into every aspect of the fashion ecosystem and breaking barriers. Some of the uses of technology and its applications can be seen in wearables, smart-textiles, 3D printing, augmented and virtual realities, IoT, the blockchain, retail technology, sustainability and AI. The list is endless and will continue to grow with the advancements in technology and the openness of the fashion industry.
Ah so it’s a global thing, gotchya, so what does this have to do with Ireland?
Ireland with its reputation as ‘Europe’s tech hub’ is a

Is your startup growing? Do you have ambitions to enter the US market? Bank of Ireland’s incubation space in New York City is now open for applications.
Applications are open for startlab NYC, an incubation space that will support Bank of Ireland startup customers who want to scale their business and enter the US market.
Seven successful business applicants will have access to a free incubation space in New York City for 12 months. The firms will also receive mentoring from Bank of Ireland’s innovation and corporate banking teams in both Ireland and the US. When they arrive in NYC, the bank will also make introductions to venture capitalists, state agencies and relevant intermediaries based in the Big Apple.
Last year, Irish tech startups Deposify, Pulsate, Axonista, BriteBiz, Glofox, LogoGrab and KONG Digital were selected to join startlab NYC.
Will your business be next?
“Entering a new market can be a daunting experience for any startup. Our team in New York, along with our Enterprise & Innovation team and sector specialists in Dublin, will give the seven successful companies the support they need to scale their business, seek investment and grow Stateside,” says Francesca McDonagh, group CEO, Bank of Ireland.
Apply here.