Record number of Irish start-ups chosen for leading Silicon Valley accelerator

A record number of Irish start-ups have been selected for the latest instalment of Y Combinator, the prestigious Silicon Valley-based accelerator programme.

The Irish companies will all be pitching their businesses to around 1,500 investors this week at the accelerator's demo day. In doing so they will be following in the footsteps of well-known companies such as Airbnb, Stripe, Coinbase, Doordash, Instacart, Reddit, The Atheltic and Dropbox, who all got a lift after securing spots on the programme early on.

Stripe co-founder Patrick Collison has previously said that Y Combinator played a key role in helping his company find success.

Marc Andreessen of the leading tech-focused venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (A16Z) has described it as "the best programme for creating top-end entrepreneurs that has ever existed".

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The five Irish start-ups taking part in Y Combinator’s summer cohort are:

Artillery.IO, a company that has developed an open-source testing toolkit for developers, testers, and site reliability engineers.

Luminate Medical, a medical device company based in Galway, which is pioneering the development of LILY, a device to prevent chemotherapy-induced hair loss.

Noloco, a no-code client portal builder for agencies and small and medium enterprises to centralise and automate client interactions.

Protex AI, a Limerick-based computer vision-based software company providing proactive safety technology to help companies reduce injuries in the workplace.

Sitenna, a company that connects mobile network operators with real estate owners to help them identify locations to install masts.

Portfolio

Y Combinator has funded more than 3,000 start-ups since 2005 with a typical investment of $150,000 per company. It is seen as the first and best seed accelerator for tech start-ups globally, with the combined valuation of companies in its portfolio topping $300 billion.

"Being backed by YC is a huge statement of confidence in what we're trying to build, and to be supported by the most prestigious accelerator programme in the world provides us with a platform to achieve our ambitions," Daniel Campion, co-founder and chief executive of Sitenna, told The Irish Times.

"To see so many Irish start-ups in the cohort is a fantastic boost to the Irish tech scene, and solidifies what we are seeing. Ireland is becoming a major tech hub and is a fantastic foundation to build an international business from."

Y Cominbator’s Demo Day typically takes place as an in-person event, although this week’s event is to be held via Zoom due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Other Irish companies who have previously secured a place on the accelerator include Klir, a compliance start-up for water utilities, mobile chat subscription company Quorum Chat (previously Monaru), and Inscribe, an online fraud detection firm that recently raised $10.5 million in funding.