Two Irish start-ups have been accepted into the high-profile Silicon Valley Y-Combinator accelerator programme.<\/p>\n
The three-month programme in San Francisco<\/a> runs four times a year and provides personalised mentorship as well as $500,000 in funding for each start-up. <\/p>\n Y-Combinator has seen the launch of the creators behind household names such as Airbnb<\/a>, Stripe<\/a>, Reddit<\/a> and Open AI<\/a>. <\/p>\n ProvenMetal, one of the two Irish start-ups to secure slots this summer, was founded by Trinity College Dublin<\/a> engineering students Johnny Doyle and Will Carkner. It assembles printed circuit boards for US<\/a> hardware and robotics companies.<\/p>\n \u201cIn one line, what we\u2019re building is circuit boards,\u201d said Doyle, \u201cand the reason behind that is they\u2019re 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\u201d.<\/p>\n 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. <\/p>\n Doyle and Carkner initially made a different pitch to the programme but were told they weren\u2019t ambitious enough. They had a week in advance of a second interview to create a new business model, which ended up proving successful.<\/p>\n \u201cAn hour before the interviews, we booked flights to San Francisco,\u201d Doyle said. \u201cWe said to them, whether we get in or not, we\u2019re going to San Francisco. We\u2019re going to build this company with or without you.\u201d<\/p>\n The two have since been joined by fellow Trinity engineering student Alex McConnell to help build the company.<\/p>\n Joining them in San Francisco will be Ryan Morrissey and Bence Redmond, two former University of Limerick<\/a> 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. <\/p>\n