A new research report from Ibec, From Vision to Venture: What Founders Need to Thrive and Scale, highlights the importance of founder-led enterprises to the Irish economy. According to the report, more than 234,000 people are employed by Enterprise Ireland-backed companies, and more than €7 billion has been raised by indigenous start-ups in the past five years.
The research on which the report is based revealed high levels of confidence among the founder community, with 77 per cent of respondents rating the current business environment positively and 68 per cent optimistic about the next six months.
“They also have strong growth ambitions, with 22 per cent planning to access new markets, 21 per cent intending to launch new products or services and 15 per cent identifying fundraising as a top business priority,” says Ibec executive director for membership and sectors Sharon Higgins. In addition, 60 per cent of the founders surveyed are either planning to hire or have already hired in 2025.
“We carried out the research to understand the challenges facing founders and what supports they need,” says Higgins.
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Unsurprisingly, those challenges include funding and access to talent, but other very concerning issues were uncovered by the research. “We got a lot of feedback on the struggles founders are having with work-life balance and with mental health and wellbeing at a personal level,” she says. “Many founders have invested everything they own in their business and are under huge pressure.”
Some 27 per cent of respondents identified access to funding as a key challenge. Critical skills gaps in areas such as sales and business development were also highlighted, while tax and incentive schemes were described as overly complex and often ineffective.
The report recommends an increase in public investment in research and innovation, enhancements to the R&D tax credit in areas such as the cap on outsourcing expenditure. “Grants and tax incentives should be simplified and access to EU funding and capital markets needs to be improved,” Higgins says. “On talent, we would like to see a national training voucher scheme and an increase in Skillnet funding among other measures.”
Access to capital and people are the two key challenges identified by Luma Vision founder Fionn Lahart. Founded in 2020 by Lahart and Christoph Hennersperger, the company is developing a novel ultrasound-based cardiac imaging catheter.
“We have raised €50 million to date and now employ 75 people in Dublin and Munich,” says Lahart. “We have received FDA approval and carried out clinical tests in the Mater. We are engaged in further fundraising at present, and we’ll commercialise the product in the US next year.”
He believes a new approach on the part of government is required if Ireland is to develop billion-dollar indigenous companies that can grow and scale from Ireland. “The Government needs to make direct big investments in companies of the order of €20, €30, €50 billion through a vehicle like ISIF [Ireland Strategic Investment Fund]. The money is there in ISIF. It’s just a question of deploying the capital. It’s not grants. The Government would be investing alongside other investors and would stand to make a return on the investment. It would give private investors confidence that next-stage investment will be there when it’s needed.”
For Chirp founder Rena Maycock, funding is also the key challenge but at a different end of the spectrum. Chirp is a built-in child-protection software product that makes internet use safe for children by detecting offensive and inappropriate content on their smartphones and alerting parents in real time of the imminent danger.
“It took an awfully long time to get funded,” says Maycock. She came up with the concept in 2017, but it took until 2023 to get the €4 million required to progress it. “We eventually got funding through the Disruptive Technologies Innovation Fund (DTIF) but we had to put a consortium together with DCU and Amárach to get it.”
It also had to be co-funded. “We got angel investors on board to provide the co-funding. We got started in May 2023 and we have done what we set out to do. We are two months out from market and are raising €5 million to launch and scale.”
She says the Employment and Investment Incentive Scheme needs to be simplified and made much more accessible. “That wouldn’t cost the taxpayer a lot of money but would help early-stage firms,” she says. “Also, the DTIF is brilliant, but you need a consortium to avail of it. SMEs can apply on their own to the European Innovation Council Accelerator and receive up to 70 per cent funding for their projects. It should be the same for the DTIF. We need to support indigenous IP-rich R&D-intensive companies and reduce our reliance on FDI. What’s available at the moment might be suitable for whiskey brands or whatever but is not appropriate for capital-intensive deep tech companies.”
