Output Sports Named Best Early Stage Company in Dublin
Output Sports, the University College Dublin (UCD) sports technology spin-out, has been named ‘Best Early Stage’ company, and won a €20,000 prize, at the Dublin Final of the 2019 InterTradeIreland Seedcorn Investor Readiness Competition. Seedcorn is the island’s biggest business competition for innovative new start and early stage businesses in any sector. The winners from each of four regional finals, including Dublin, will go forward to an all-island final to be held in Dublin later this month.
Output Sports, headquartered at NovaUCD, shrink lab-grade athlete performance analytics into a wearable system so coaches can truly understand athletes and optimise their performance. Output Sports is an end-to-end system designed to streamline the off-field athlete performance optimisation process. It is capable of testing an athlete’s performance profile, such as strength, power, balance, speed and mobility, and tracks their exercise programmes. This is completed using off the shelf wearable sensors and applying sophisticated signal processing and machine learning applications to the sensor data.
Output Sports, a spin-out from the UCD School of Public Health, Physiotherapy and Sports Science, was founded by Dr Martin O’Reilly, Dr Darragh Whelan, Julian Eberle and Professor Brian Caulfield, based on research they carried out at the Science Foundation Ireland funded Insight Centre for Data Analytics at UCD.
Dr Darragh Whelan, co-founder and CSO, Output Sports Ltd, said: “Winning the ‘Best Early Stage’ category at the Dublin Final is a great achievement for us. Our prototypes will have been used by over 30 professional teams including international and premier league football teams, professional rugby organisations and Olympic athletes by the end of the year. The prize money will help accelerate the commercialisation process of the company, initially we aim to expand the team and accelerate growth in Europe and the US.”
Dr Martin O’Reilly, co-founder and CEO, Output Sports, added: “It is a privilege to receive this award at a pivotal time for Output Sports as we approach the launch of our first product ‘Output//Capture’. We now greatly look forward to the National final on 28 November.”
Earlier this year the company won the Best Business Idea Award at the final of the 2019 Ireland’s Best Young Entrepreneur competition, representing the Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown LEO.
In addition to Output Sports, thriftify, an e-commerce platform for charities, established in 2018 by Rónán Ó Dálaigh, Rahil Nazir and Timur Negru won the ‘Best New Start’ company Award at the Dublin Final.
To date, InterTradeIreland has supported over 2,300 enterprising companies through the Seedcorn process. With almost €254 million in equity funding being secured by entrepreneurs who have entered the Seedcorn competition it emphasises its position as the premier competition for high growth start-up companies on the island of Ireland.
At the final event in late November an overall ‘Best New Start’ company and a ‘Best Early Stage’ company will be announced, each winning €50,000, with the ‘Overall Winner’ receiving a total of €100,000 to contribute to business growth.
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Pictured (L-R): Shane O’Hanlon, InterTradeIreland’s Funding for Growth Manager, with Output Sport founders – Julian Eberle, Dr Martin O’Reilly and Dr Darragh Whelan.
