Golfer Graeme McDowell and and Padraig Harrington's caddie Ronan Flood are among the investors to have backed Irish sports tech company Orreco as it closes off a €1.3 million Series A funding round.
The two are among a number of so-called 'angel investors' to invest a combined €760,000 in the round, which was led by Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm True Ventures.
Galway-headquarted Orreco uses machine learning and data analytics to monitor, the health of athletes, helping to accelerate recovery, optimise performance and prolong careers.
Other backers in the round include Irish tech veteran Pa Nolan, one of Kerry-based financial services group Fexco's earliest employees, and someone who has backed numerous local start-ups in recent years including Treemetrics, OnePage CRM, Scurri and Wazp.
Orreco profiles athletes based on biomarkers in the blood and then feeds this information into machine-learning programmes that can optimise training conditions. This includes identifying the best sleep patterns, the best diet, training intensity and duration.
The company works with some leading sports teams including the Dallas Mavericks and Newcastle United.
FitrCoach
Orreco's product suite includes FitrCoach, a new product which allows coaches or coaching teams to understand and support female athletes during training and in each phase of their menstrual cycle. Clients already using FitrCoach include the New Zealand senior women's rugby team, Black Ferns, and USA Swimming.
True Ventures, which has more than $2 billion (€1.8 billion) under management, invested a further $600,000 in Orreco in the latest round to bring its total investment in the company to $2.6 million.
Other companies supported by True Ventures include Duo Security, a start-up recently acquired by Cisco for $2 billion. The VC firm was also one of the earliest backers of Fitbit.
Orreco last week announced it had joined forces with North American athlete management system Kinduct to develop products aimed at elite sports organisations, leagues, teams and athletes. It also has a strategic partnership with activity tracking company Strava.
Founded in late 2009 by chief executive and sports scientist Brian Moore and consultant haematologist Andy Hodgson, the company has raised over $4.5 million to date with other backers including Aryzta chief executive Kevin Toland, former Glanbia managing director John Moloney and Enterprise Ireland.
"Our mission at Orreco has always been to help the best athletes in the world get even better. Closing our Series A with tremendous support from existing and new investors will help us realise our vision to translate insights from the elite and make them available to us all," Mr Moore told The Irish Times.
