DCU Ryan Academy connecting European start-ups and international industry leaders for mentoring series

The DCU Ryan Academy is connecting European start-ups with international industry leaders for Cross Border Mentorship 2016, a week-long series commencing today (Monday, April 11th) at Citywest Business Campus. It forms part of the Welcome Project which is funded by the EU Commission through the Startup Europe initiative.

Intel, Tripadvisor, Datalex, Mastercard, Cartrawler and Hostelworld are some of the corporates in attendance who will provide strategic development advice to sixteen start-ups, including four Irish companies, from the travel and hardware tech sector.

Twelve start-ups from Berlin, Madrid and Milan will join with their Irish counterparts to avail of individual and collective mentoring in the areas of strategy and development, business plans, financing and investment, product design, manufacturing and marketing, in order to progress to the next level.

Speaking about the event CEO of the Ryan Academy, Eoghan Stack said: “Cross Border Mentorship week is about bringing entrepreneur and start-up ecosystems together and this week in Dublin, we will have the best early start-ups from Europe and Ireland collaborating and availing of the advice and experience of world class industry leaders. The DCU Ryan Academy is proud to be at the forefront of connecting industry and start-ups and of facilitating an environment of shared knowledge, expertise and support in order to enable our Irish start-ups to flourish on a European and international level. We are also particularly pleased to have significant input from world-leading companies who are investing their time, energy and resources into Cross Border Mentorship.”

This year’s Irish representatives include SimpliFly, a global airport shopping smartphone app and delivery service; Dynamic Res, a platform which makes travel agents more efficient by organising supplier requests and allowing them to build a package; VisitorM works with airports to improve passenger experience and partner performance to increase passenger revenue. The fourth start-up is Exerwise, an activity tracker for children, helping them to discover a new fun approach to physical activity.

The Milan based start-ups include Waynaut, a multimodal travel platform that enables people worldwide to travel seamlessly; BidToTrip, is an app for luxury hotel rooms, allowing customers to access top quality rooms at an affordable price; Noon provides a platform to customers enabling them to manage and control dedicated hybrid mobile devices while 4storm aims at evolving the field of action-cam and lifestyle hi-tech products bringing high-tech usability and flexibility into the market.

The Berlin based quartet are TourSnapp, bringing smart-city to the cultural sphere; seeusoon, a travel search engine which builds and compares unique travel packages; Miito which provide tea drinkers with the perfect solution to brew their cup of tea and VaiKai which brings toys alive by creating a multi-sensory experience for children.

The remaining European start-ups are from Madrid and include LandMeFar, a travel outlet exclusively for young people aged 18-30; DaniRebollo which harnesses the power of Embedded GPU; Imprimaker is an online 3D design and manufacturing service and OrionSky which monitors the status of your pet from your smartphone.

Cross Border Mentorship Week 2016 is taking place at the DCU Ryan Academy, Citywest Business Campus from April 11th to April 15th. For more details go to http://www.ryanacademy.ie/