Irish Startups win trip to Silicon Valley and European roadshows

Two startups have won a trip to Silicon Valley and a European Roadshow in a competition organised by Welcome and DCU Ryan Academy.

Artomatix and Fonesense will fly to Silicon Valley for a three-week immersion programme at Mind the Bridge Startup School in San Francisco at the start of September. They will be joined by six other startups from Berlin, Milan and Madrid for an intensive programme that includes workshops, mentoring, networking and company site visits. Once the startups return to Europe, they will embark on a two-week pan-European tour of Berlin, Milan, Madrid and Salamanca. As part of this tour the startups will attend a number of events and pitch their business to investors, business angels and international media.

All of these activities will come at no cost to the entrepreneurs. The Silicon Valley School tuition, travel and accommodation expenses for both the Silicon Valley trip and the European roadshow will be covered by Welcome.

Artomatix aims to develop the next generation of art tools, automating digital media creation. Inflating costs for art development is the number one problem for both the video game and animation industries. Artomatix directly solves this problem by applying machine learning and big data concepts to art creation, enabling the computer to take over many tedious and time consuming aspects of art creation.

Fonesense enables marketers and app developers to engage with users in a captivating manner, using highly targeted content and offers of engagement at the right moments with the right media, using real life living context.

The Silicon Valley and European Roadshow programme is part of the Welcome project, a Startup Europe initiative funded by the EU Commission. DCU Ryan Academy is the Irish partner of the Welcome project.

DCU Ryan Academy CEO, Eoghan Stack, spoke about the opportunities available for Irish startups through the Welcome project:

“Over the two year life of the project, DCU Ryan Academy is hosting competitions, hackathons, conferences and events in Dublin with the aim of linking the Irish startup community to the wider European entrepreneurial ecosystem. This project is an unmissable opportunity for Irish startups to connect with Silicon Valley, meet fellow entrepreneurs, investors and potential mentors from across Europe and scale their businesses into European markets and the US.”