Business

Irish start-up Slick+ bridges the gap in tacit learning associated with remote working

Short-format video platform allows users to share skills, job know-how and in-house ways of doing things with their colleagues

Linda Hegarty and Paul Conneally, co-founders of Slick+. The start-up will target with the Irish market before moving to the UK, the EU and the US

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Olive Keogh
Thu Jun 20 2024 - 05:45

One of the problems with remote working is sharing the informal learning that happens automatically when people are together. Hybrid working has made the problem worse and organisations are struggling to plug their tacit knowledge deficit. But help is at hand. Stepping up with a solution is Slick+, a west of Ireland start-up that has developed a peer-to-peer knowledge-sharing platform based around short-format video.

Slick+ is a user-friendly video creation tool that taps into the knowledge already in people’s heads and lets them share skills, organisational insights, job know-how and in-house ways of doing things with their colleagues. For example, a company may have a particular way of running an event. However, if someone is new or organising an event for the first time they might be unsure about the precise format.

With Slick+ they can search the company’s playlist for an “events” video (prepared by an experienced colleague) and get all the information they need at the click of a button. Key to the Slick+ process is short-burst learning that means someone can get answers quickly during their normal work flow.

“Slick+ redefines mentoring by turning every user into a learner and a teacher. It makes collective learning simple and social and helps foster the team bonds and connections that can be missing in the hybrid world of work,” says Paul Conneally, who cofounded the company with Linda Hegarty at the very end of 2022.

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“Our original research was focused on the opportunities presented by the post-Covid workplace for online learning. However, it soon became clear that the real opportunity lay in enabling organisations to capture the collective knowledge and experience of their employees,” Conneally adds.

“Further research through the Irish Institute for Digital Business validated the need for a solution that was people-centric and could reimagine the spontaneous, peer-led, informal moments of learning, mentoring and upskilling that are commonplace in a physical office space.”

Slick+ is co-located between Galway and Sligo and employs 12 people. The company will make its money by offering a SaaS product, based on a monthly charge per user, and the system works with any size of business from SMEs up.

Trials have been ongoing since last October and the system will have its full commercial launch this month. Investment to the tune of about €120,000 has come from a combination of founder funding and support from Sligo local enterprise office while Hegarty was also a recent participant on the New Frontiers programme at ATU Sligo.

[ Half of Irish workers would refuse job offers with no option to work from home, research finds ]

“We are currently in advanced conversations with Growing Capital (an early stage investment firm) and have an application under review with Enterprise Ireland for a seed round through HPSU (high potential start-up). We anticipate a further round in late 2025 and have already started conversations with business angels and institutional investors,” Conneally says.

“Our beachhead customers are national and international organisations in the health and emergency sectors with significant employee onboarding and retention needs, including surge deployments.

“We are also focused on knowledge-based organisations who are committed to the hybrid model, whose internal know-how (or IP) is very specific to their context and whose managers need support to lead and motivate teams.

“Our immediate roadmap also includes integration with the Microsoft 365 suite, more bespoke AI functionality (including a revolutionary system for leveraging hidden knowledge), a mobile app and a dashboard for key metrics and insights.”

Conneally says Slick+ will start with the Irish market before moving to the UK, the EU and the US.

Community organisations based in Geneva will also be an early focus as both Conneally and Hegarty have backgrounds with international organisation including the UN and the International Red Cross. Conneally is a communications and marketing professional while Hegarty is an expert in online and blended learning with a particular focus on user experience and the adoption of new technologies in the workplace.