Dublin has long<\/span> been home to Big Tech\u2019s European outposts, drawn by low taxes and Ireland\u2019s position as the only English-speaking country in the European Union. Historically, however, this has negatively affected local startups: Big salaries and cushy positions at Big Tech companies made it difficult for smaller, nimbler companies to compete.<\/p>\n That situation is finally changing: \u201cOver the past few years, the culture has shifted away from Big Tech,\u201d says Nicola McClafferty, chair of the Irish Venture Capital Association and a partner in Molten Ventures, a venture capital firm operating in Ireland. \u201cWe\u2019re seeing more and more people and talent wanting to come out of those companies, and really thinking about joining earlier-stage and high-growth startups.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s in part down to Irish startup successes like communications platform Intercom and payments system Stripe, which have proven homegrown wins are possible. \u201cWhat\u2019s interesting in Ireland generally is that the ecosystem is expanding, and there are hubs popping up other than Dublin,\u201d says McClafferty.<\/p>\n Bobby Healy, founder of autonomous drone delivery service, Manna.<\/span>Photograph: Laurence McMahon<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n Manna<\/p>\n Founded in 2018 by serial founder Bobby Healy, Manna has fast become one of Ireland\u2019s buzziest startups. The company was born out of frustration: \u201cI live in a suburb of Dublin,\u201d says Healy. \u201cIt\u2019s impossible to get delivery from local restaurants to my house in a reliable way, and in a way that is economical for the vendor or the driver, so I decided to build autonomous drones to make this efficient, easy, and affordable.\u201d Local businesses and brands that use Manna can reach customers within a 30 square mile radius at a fraction of the cost of delivery by car or van. Average delivery time is currently two minutes and 40 seconds. \u201cWe charge about 3 quid (roughly $3.40) for delivery, and of course, you don\u2019t need to tip the drone,\u201d says Healy. The company\u2019s large white drones, roughly the size of a seagull, have completed more than 110,000 flights. Manna has raised $30 million from Molten Ventures, Dynamo, and ffVC, and has plans to enter the US and another European market by the end of 2022. manna.aero<\/em><\/p>\n Kinzen<\/p>\n Kinzen cofounder Mark Little has been one of Ireland\u2019s best-known foreign correspondents and news anchors for nearly two decades. Little left TV channel RTE in 2009, and with former political correspondent \u00c1ine Kerr, he founded Kinzen in 2017. \u201cKinzen\u2019s initial mission was to help internet users improve the quality of their newsfeeds,\u201d says Little. It now uses a mix of machine learning for automatic speech recognition, and human moderation to further review controversial content and spot dis- and misinformation and hate speech\u2014including by providing podcast moderation services to Spotify. Funded by partnerships with content platforms like Spotify, public health authorities in Ireland, and content moderation companies, Kinzen will soon offer support across 26 languages, with local analysts across Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and Latin America. kinzen.com<\/em><\/p>\n Inferex<\/p>\n When 19-year-old Greg Tarr won the BT Young Scientist of the Year award in 2021, people took notice. The annual award had previously been won by Patrick Collison, CEO of Irish tech unicorn Stripe\u2014and those who win generally go on to make waves in the Irish tech sector. Inferex, the company Tarr founded in 2021, automates the development of AI models, simplifying jobs that took weeks or months into a few lines of code. \u201cWe want to do for AI what Stripe did to payments,\u201d he says. \u201cEngineers spent far too much time on DevOps and infrastructure,\u201d says Tarr. He leads a team of nine fully remote employees across Ireland, Portugal, New Zealand, Spain, and the US, and has raised \u20ac3.6 million ($3.5 million) from Frontline and Seedcamp. inferex.com<\/em><\/p>\n Tines<\/p>\n When cofounders Eoin Hinchy and Thomas Kinsella left DocuSign to found cybersecurity firm Tines in 2018, they wanted to make staying safe online easier and more efficient. The result? A platform that allows people who don\u2019t know how to write code to automate repetitive, manual tasks. Tines is used by security teams at companies including Coinbase, OpenTable, and Canva. The company, which has 129 staff members, was valued at $300 million in April 2021, when it raised $26 million in Series B funding, and has offices in Dublin and Boston. In total, the firm has raised $41 million from the likes of Accel, CrowdStrike, and Blossom Capital. tines.com<\/em><\/p>\n Zipp Mobility<\/p>\n Founded in 2019 by Charlie Gleeson, dockless scooter startup Zipp Mobility was one of the few firms to be approved for a 2020 trial by the UK Department of Transport. The company differentiates itself from competitors in the crowded scooter space through its sustainability credentials: It uses only electric vans and cargo bikes to replenish the fleet, reducing its carbon footprint, and runs operations in-house, shunning outsourced workers. Operating in eight cities across Poland and the UK, the company launched its ninth city in its home market in March 2022. Three months later, the company raised \u20ac6.1 million (about $6 million) in investment, led by Fasanara Capital, to help it expand its team. zippmobility.com<\/em><\/p>\n Evervault<\/p>\n \u201cEvervault began with a Google search,\u201d says Shane Curran, the founder of the Irish encryption infrastructure startup that has raised $19.4 million from angel investors including Alex Stamos, former chief security officer at Facebook. Curran, an amateur cryptographer and software developer, was building software for his local school and struggled to keep private information secure. In 2019, he set up Evervault with a mission to encrypt the web and the data that companies on the internet handle with a single line of code. Currently used by companies across the fintech and healthtech sectors, Curran and his 30-strong team ultimately hope to permanently eliminate data breaches\u2014and are working on building out product suites to cover payments and crypto functions. evervault.com<\/em><\/p>\n![\"Greg](\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/gp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/100-HS-2022-Dublin-Greg-Tarr-Business.jpg\"\/)