Data-protection compliance start-up Dataships raises €500,000

Dataships, a start-up that specialises in automating compliance for data protection and privacy laws, has raised €500,000 in seed funding.

Backers of the company include Irish rugby player Ian Madigan and Peter Crowley, co-founder of investment firm FL Partners and formerly chief executive of IBI Corporate Finance. Other participants in the recent fundraise are Enterprise Ireland and Accelprise, a San Francisco-based early-stage Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) accelerator.

Dataships is focused on helping SMEs comply with laws such as General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), by automating privacy compliance.

The company, which is co-located in Dublin and San Francisco, was founded by Ryan McErlane and Michael Storan last year.

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Mr McErlane has a background working with EY and Accenture on enterprise compliance, while Mr Storan studied regulation at the London School of Economics and is formerly the founder of an online gambling platform, known as Fantasy Rugger, which was sold to Sky.

“GDPR applies to everyone but we saw there was a gap in the market and that while there were some companies providing compliance solutions for corporates, there was little focus on smaller companies so that is where we focused our efforts,” said Mr McErlane.

“We started out selling to sole traders but more recently we have been getting bigger names as clients and hopefully we’ll land some enterprise clients soon,” he added.

Mr McErlane said the company would be looking to raise a seven-figure sum next year as it seeks to scale quickly to meet demand. Dataships expects to have 10 to 12 staff within months and expects to double headcount by 2022.