We continue our series on companies trying to raise cash through the Business Angel Partnership. This month, we look at the progress of Flúirse and Openplain.
FLUIRSE
At the start of the month, Tralee-based education software company Flúirse was approached by a potential investor looking to invest somewhere in the region of between €100,000 and €200,000 in the company. Directors Kristian O'Donovan and Tomas Finneran (pictured right) have met with the investor and he is interested in bringing the negotiations to the next level, which will involve due diligence.
"We'll need to sit down and weigh up the pros and cons," says O'Donovan. "We don't want to regret giving away equity at such an early stage without it adding real value to the business. There's much more to consider beyond the actual cash investment."
Just after Christmas, Flúirse finalised the board members for the company and in the middle of March it held its first board of directors' meeting at its offices in Tralee.
"Our first board meeting was excellent," says O'Donovan. "The feedback and suggestions from such an experienced team were invaluable."
On the business end of things, the company received notification from the Department of Education that all of its summer courses for teachers had been approved.
"We are delighted to be the leading provider of online summer courses for teachers this year," says O'Donovan.
"Our diverse range of courses will benefit teachers in areas beyond ICT and computing. This latest development further strengthens our position as the pioneers of ICT in education. We're very excited about this year's programme as we used all the feedback, suggestions and experience from last year to develop a range of courses that really address the issues and needs of primary school teachers. This is a critical part of our R&D strategy in everything we do; a constant user-focused process with the end-user's feedback forming the basis of all refinements."
Towards the end of January the company was contacted by a large local multinational company to develop courseware for some of its client companies. O'Donovan visited the company's London office during the month and talks are now in the final stages. "If all goes to plan, this contract will be significant to the development of Flúirse. It means that we're getting busier and busier with such an extensive workload. This is where having a dedicated and passionate team is critical for a company like ours at a relatively early stage," explains O'Donovan.
OPENPLAIN
Dublin-based start-up Openplain, the company behind online monitoring software service JournalLive, is continuing to expand.
"Jack Nagle has recently joined the company as our sales and marketing director. In his most recent role as director of channel, IMLogic Europe, he successfully helped establish the company as the leading vendor in its space prior to being acquired by Symantec corporation, so we're very excited by his arrival," says managing director Jonathan Mulligan (pictured left). Nagle's appointment is already paying off for Openplain. His experience with, and contacts in, the Irish and UK financial services sector has helped it to secure pilot projects in two international banks.
"Financial institutions are getting increasingly worried on the back of things like the recent Société Générale incident," explains Mulligan. "Our OnPremises solution, Journal, integrates with a bank's own systems and automatically notifies managers and administrators when suspicious activity is detected. This helps institutions' compliance units automate and centralise many of their compliance tests - saving time and money.
Our tech team has recently added support for monitoring Citrix sessions also. With over 95 per cent of Fortune 500 companies using Citrix in some manner, this update really increases our offering to larger institutions."
Its online employee productivity monitoring tool is still very popular, according to Mulligan.
"We now have 120 Irish SMEs using it to reduce personal browsing, e-mail and instant messaging in the workplace," he says.
