Kate crowned Best Young Entrepreneur
THE finest young business minds in the Garden County were announced at Wicklow Brewery last Tuesday evening at the County Final of Ireland’s Best Young Entrepreneur (IBYE) competition.
The Local Enterprise Office Wicklow named 33-year-old Kate Dempsey of Arklow as the overall ‘Best Young Entrepreneur’ for the county. She impressed with her Irish Mussel Seed Company, which is still in the pre-trading phase. The business was established to develop a dependable, quality supply of sustainably sourced Irish mussel seed. The company is developing a system to harvest mussel seed off the coast of Wicklow on suspended structures in the offshore conditions of Irish waters. Kate also won the Best Business Idea category and an investment fund from LEO Wicklow worth €7,000.
Wicklow town’s Maurice Sheehy, aged 27, won the Best Start Up category for this business, Fleet, which is an innovative peer to peer car rental platform that links both consumers and business to vehicles on demand.
The Best Established Business category was won by Michael Noble of Kilcoole for Noble Solutions. The 30-year-old runs the management consultancy company who specialise in the advancement of higher education in Southeast Asia. Representing the interests of a small number of public higher education institutions from the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom, Noble Solutions is responsible for managing education projects that span Indonesia, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Vietnam.
Each winner in the Best Start Up and Best Established Categories will benefit from a prize of €15,000 for their business. All three category winners will now be representing the County at the Regional Final to be held in Wicklow on January 25, 2018.
There were also three category runners-up who all shared an investment of €13,000. They were Aoife Mullane, age 26, of A.mullane design, Bray in the Best Established Business category; Dean Siney, age 27, of Nutriquick based in Blessington in the Best Start Up category and Gearoid O’ Biriain, age 29, of Drone SAR based in Rathdrum in the Best Idea category.
Since their start four years ago, the IBYE competition has invested €200,000 in 18 Wicklow businesses.
Sheelagh Daly, Head of Enterprise with Local Enterprise Office Wicklow, said: ‘ these young entrepreneurs are the bedrock of future economic development in the county and we are delighted to encourage young people to use their imagination and energy to create winning businesses.’