Two Irish start-ups have been accepted into the high-profile Silicon Valley Y-Combinator accelerator programme.
The three-month programme in San Francisco runs four times a year and provides personalised mentorship as well as $500,000 in funding for each start-up.
Y-Combinator has seen the launch of the creators behind household names such as Airbnb, Stripe, Reddit and Open AI.
ProvenMetal, one of the two Irish start-ups to secure slots this summer, was founded by Trinity College Dublin engineering students Johnny Doyle and Will Carkner. It assembles printed circuit boards for US hardware and robotics companies.
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“In one line, what we’re building is circuit boards,” said Doyle, “and the reason behind that is they’re incredibly critical for technology to develop, and in the US there is a major problem, which is that the entire supply chain does not work”.
Doyle said long wait times exist in the current supply chain for hardware, robotics and electronics companies, a gap the company is hoping to fill by producing circuit boards domestically in the US.
Doyle and Carkner initially made a different pitch to the programme but were told they weren’t ambitious enough. They had a week in advance of a second interview to create a new business model, which ended up proving successful.
“An hour before the interviews, we booked flights to San Francisco,” Doyle said. “We said to them, whether we get in or not, we’re going to San Francisco. We’re going to build this company with or without you.”
The two have since been joined by fellow Trinity engineering student Alex McConnell to help build the company.
Joining them in San Francisco will be Ryan Morrissey and Bence Redmond, two former University of Limerick software engineering students. Their fintech start-up, Blueprints, hopes to help investors trade using AI to identify opportunities based on plain English prompts about their views.
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“You tell an AI agent your belief about the world and it turns it into an automated trading strategy,” said Morrissey. “Let’s say, you think AI stock is overhyped, or that SpaceX is going to fall. You tell the agent that, and it builds a strategy that best aligns with that belief.”
“I’m trying to build the next Stripe,” Morrissey added. “I want to build the next massive multinational company from Ireland.”
Both teams know each other from working at neighbouring desks in Dogpatch Labs, and will work within the same group in the Y-Combinator programme.
