The Kerryman (South Kerry Edition)
Start up award for Harpoon
TRALEE based businessman Derek Counihan has won a top prize at the Mid West Regional Finals of the Ireland’s Best Young Entrepreneur competition.
Mr Counihan – the founder of Harpoon based at the HQ business centre in Tralee – won the Best Start Up award at the regional finals and he will now go on to represent Kerry at the national final.
Harpoon provide web and mobile apps designed to help firms – particularly those in regional and localised media; bloggers and online influencers – generate money from their content.
Prior to founding Harpoon Derek Counihan worked at Stockbyte for seven years – joining the company at just 16 – prior to the stock image company’s sale to Getty Images for $135 million in 2006.
Mr Counihan – a graduate of IT Tralee said the next phase for Harpoon is the aggregation of its local media customer base.
“Our ‘Local Media - Together’ platform enables the aggregation of our media customer base so national agencies for the first time can target multiple local markets in one shot,” he said.
“Our key focus is rolling out our products to help bloggers and online influencers generate instant monetization for their content. We can do this by offering Self-Build Mobile Apps using Software as a Service model (i.e. Go live instantly, no upfront costs, monthly fees),” said Derek Counihan .
“We are working to build on our existing media customer base in Ireland and the UK. Harpoon is a rapidly scaling company underpinned by growth in digital advertising and the immediate need for media groups to transition to digital,” he said.
In November, Derek won the overall prize at the Kerry Final of Ireland’s Best Young Entrepreneur competition and the category for Best Start-Up Business with an investment fund from Kerry Local Enterprise Office worth €15,000.
The national final of the competition takes place in March.