Bringing together growing, innovative early-stage traveltech startups with real industry superstars and success stories is always a fun time!” – Shane Carter, Programme Coordinator at DCU Ryan Academy

A compilation of photos, happy faces, founders, ecosystem builders, mentors, all full of energy! This is the wrap of the Deep Dive Week in Dublin TravelTech edition!

Round of applause for our great hosts in Dublin DCU Ryan Academy Donal Brady and Shane Carter for the excellent and smooth organisation of our first Deep Dive Week!

Want to know what happened? Check our day by day activities and stay tuned for an incredible wrap up video!

Day 1

The programme started with the startups arriving in Dublin. Everyone got to know each other before the official kick-off over a casual coffee, while Niamh Bushnell Founder and CEO of Tech Ireland started the week with a presentation about “Why to choose Dublin?”. 

Our objective is not to make you go back saying how great Ireland is, but to get what you came here for” – Donal Brady, Scaling Manager DCU Ryan Academy

Then, a pitch session, where startups presented themselves and an overview of the whole week, the programme and what is Startup Europe delivered by our own Donal Brady.  

The first promising day closed with a session to the “Scaleup Journey” by Blueface and its Co-founder Feargal Brady with some key insights on building a business with 1.5 million recurring revenue in 18 months.

A great part of business success is related to luck – but luck only happens if you get out thereFeargal Brady, Blueface Co-founder

Day 2

Day 2 of DDW Dublin started with a panel session on “Future of Traveltech” moderated by Donal Brady with panelists including Julie Garland (Thunder Tiger Aviation), Anthony Carville (Rainmaker Business Technologies) and John Seely (Dublin Airport Authority) discussing with our startups how to get into the aviation industry.

The day continued with a masterclass on #sales by serial scaler Ultan O’Brien (Viasat) and a session on #marketing and how to fuel #growth by Liz Smyth (Glofox), where we shared our biggest marketing challenges – differentiation is the key! Then, a quick trip to the city centre, where we got to meet HubSpot and startups learned how to craft better buyer personas. Finally, meeting a tech superstar, the CarTrawler CTO Bobby Healy. It’s not really a tech superstar visit without 1. Swag, 2. A foosball table, 3. Pizza & beer!

Day 3

Day 3 was all about VC landscape and expanding to new markets. An intensive day with learning sessions kicked off with a no-bullshit workshop on finance management.

Take charge of your forecasting, make solid shareholder agreements, be aware of what you need to do yourself and what to outsourceMoira Creedon, Artemis Consulting

Then, David Bowles from Delta VC went on demystifying funding for the DDW Dublin startups – know your options, be ready and be efficient.

After lunch, Joe Hogan followed with an aha(!) moment presentation stating the obvious, which is not that obvious.

Have you killed your own idea? Don’t get stuck loving an idea that you can’t get paid enough to deliver.Joe Hogan, CTO & Founder of Openet Global

Last but not least, John Whelan, Chief executive of Irish Exporters Association closed this interesting day with a presentation about “Export Strategy” to make startups think bigger and expand to new markets!

We couldn’t miss the chance to have a wrap party, so dinner and drinks in the city centre were in order. As Donal Brady says:

Cheers to that!

Day 4

Mentoring for Scale: 9 mentors, a dozen of Travel Tech startups and speed dates!

What a day in the heart of Dublin. Startups were amazed by the insights they gained after this intense session. Next a visit to the Irish Aviation Authority for a session by Colin Lewis CMO of OpenJawTech “Retailing: the new Customer Journey” one of the UK’s Top 100 Marketers – part of the Vision 100! Philip Hughes, Director of Technology & Training at Irish Aviation Authority was on the stand talking about innovation and opportunities for startups.

The Deep Dive Week closed with a feedback session and a sharing moment; startups were sharing their 3 take-aways from this journey.

What they said

“DDW was an excellent opportunity to grab piece of real knowledge, that one that comes from experience on field and not by academic stuffs. Really practice and really deep dive as in the proposition.”

“Deep Dive Week was a unique opportunity to learn from the people who have scaled up the business up. Got inspired. Got told I will fail. Got advice how to avoid it. :)”

“Finding four days to commit to any learning event is really hard. It means pushing the ‘day job’ to the early morning and evenings, a 60-70 hour week.This was worth the effort. An opportunity to revisit and shake up some of your business plans, numbers and collateral with the guidance and insights of experts.”

Many thanks to all of our incredible startups, speakers, mentors and trainers!

STARTUP 1-LINER
Sanctifly A global solution to travel wellness at airports
Rosterbuster App for Airline Crew
Booklying Personalization technology to drive more direct hotel bookings
Travtab A white label App for Travel Agents to accept customers payments
Yamgu YAMGU helps you create your ideal travel plan in a few steps
InflightFlix Destination Video Guides for Airline IFE, Websites & Social Media
StoryTracks Platform for bespoke, geo-location based audio guides and publishing content
Blookery Simplifying short travel experiences, with fun and excitement through blind booking
CityCheck Location-based game app that allows you to explore and play games while visiting a city
SharedTrip Find people for group activities and travel
GreenTickets A platform that allows to connect different travel operators with our system
Opportumeety Web platform to meet people while you’re on the move in public transports
Personal Travels A company pivoting to address the music travel industry
CitySwifter Optimising urban bus networks 

Sparked some FOMO in you?

Next week we’ll be in Vilnius at the Block Forum and very soon we’ll be opening up applications for the Deep Dive Weeks in September in Berlin (Industrial IoT) and Portugal (Analytics). Stay tuned!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *