IBM SmartCamps are designed to provide entrepreneurs with the mentoring and insight needed to innovate in their markets. Past participants from IBM SmartCamp competitions have captured the attention of the venture capital community with nearly $50 million in investments, and have expanded to new global markets.
Profitero helps its clients increase sales and maximise profits by leveraging high-quality online competitive data at scale. This, in turn, allows businesses to react quickly to changes in their competitors’ prices. To date, retailers and manufacturers have found Profitero’s data essential for pricing strategy, forecasting, price management, merchandising planning, product promotions, and market/brand positioning. Profitero is currently monitoring 27.5 million products across 2,500 European retail websites, and it plans to grow this to 100 million products in 2012.

“We are honored to be named the IBM Global Entrepreneur of the Year,” said Volodymyr Pigrukh, chief executive officer and co-founder, Profitero. “Our solution is a natural complement to IBM’s smarter commerce strategy. We are looking forward to working with IBM and its network of technical experts, business partners, venture capitalists, academics and clients to capture our share of the smarter commerce opportunity.”

IBM SmartCamps bring together innovative entrepreneurs with venture capitalists, academics and other industry leaders to provide coaching and critical industry support and advice. The IBM SmartCamps are designed to provide these entrepreneurs with the mentoring and insight needed to continue to drive growth and innovation in their markets.

Profitero was named as the winner of the 2011 IBM SmartCamp London in November 2011. Profitero was selected from more than 80 entries from the UK and Ireland. The company “won due to its outstanding technology, innovative business plan and alignment with IBM’s Smarter Planet strategy,” said IBM. They will now compete against other SmartCamp winners from around the globe to compete for the title of “IBM Global Entrepreneur of the Year.”

The company helps retailers maximise profits by analysing online competitive information on thousands of products and dozens of competitors, helping to build smarter retail solutions. Today, 83 per cent of mid market CIOs surveyed by IBM have identified analytics, the ability to extract actionable insights from “Big Data” as their top-priority investment area.Profitero represents a new generation of entrepreneurs who are entering the market with technology and business model designed to capitalise on this trend, said IBM.

The IBM SmartCamp Global Final will take place over four days: broken into master class day, mentoring day and the public finale. Teams and mentors will travel to San Francisco from Brazil, China, Romania, Spain, India, Romania, Israel, Ireland and the US. There will be live streaming of the event on the IBM website. “We are delighted to have won the London IBM SmartCamp award for 2011 and are looking forward to the challenges of the global final in San Francisco,” said Vol Pigrukh, chief executive and co-founder of Profitero.

“Entrepreneurs are critical to driving the next era of innovation and growth. I’ve been hugely impressed by the range and quality of start-ups we’ve seen entering the London IBM SmartCamp programme. Congratulations to Profitero and all the finalists. They’ve showcased solutions that seize major growth opportunities in the market to help make the world work smarter,” said Stephen Leonard, chief executive, IBM UK & Ireland.

For more information on IBM Smartcamp, visit www.ibm.com/ie/smarterplanet/smartcamp.

For more information on the IBM Global Entrepreneur Programme, visit
www.ibm.com/isv/startup.

For more information on Profitero, visit www.profitero.com

Billfaster, a media cube company has this week raised €330,000 in funding including an Enterprise Ireland contribution through the High-Potential Start-up (HPSU) programme.

Billfaster’s headquarters are in the Media Cube, Dún Laoghaire, where it is currently participating in the Create programme for start-ups. 
It also has a base in New York City. Billfaster also says it expects turnover to be €1.5m, and to employ 15 more people within the next three years.

So what’s the Billfaster premise that has gleaned Enterprise Ireland’s plus other investors’ attention?

The company has created an online system whereby business owners, particularly SMEs, can create and email invoices, manage cash and cash-registers, keep track of expenses and stay on top of taxes.

Director Rod Condell explained today how the Billfaster system is very fast to set up, citing the example of a company that recently signed up to Billfaster at 10.45am.

“By 10.49am they sent their first live invoice with absolutely no training.”

He said that the €330,000 investment will allow it to scale up its global business, which currently has over 5,000 users.

Most of Billfaster’s customer base are start-ups, and include everything from restaurants, interior designers, car hires and detective agencies.

Simple online functionality

Billfaster began developing its software in late 2008. The idea, explained Condell today, was that the system would be simple enough that anyone could use it, yet functional enough that any business would want to use it.



“We’ve found a nice balance between functionality and ease of use by making it ‘simple by example’,” he said.

“We have automated the accounting in the background so business owners don’t need any accounting knowledge or software training to be able manage their business finances. We have also incorporated a cash planning tool to help start-ups succeed in their formative years.”


“The basic Billfaster service is free, but for more comprehensive reporting and tools, premium versions start from less than €4 per month to €10 per month.”



billfaster provides an online invoicing, cash management and expense tracking system, with automated accounting for start-ups and small businesses.

billfaster is the simple system for small business.
Most systems claim to be easy-to-use but we have had users send live invoices to their customers within just 4 minutes of signup. We are actually simple-by-example!

Users are up and running in 60 seconds! There is no accounting knowledge, training or upfront costs required.

Free for the basics (unlimited invoices and clients, cash management and expense tracking).
You can get valuable features such as management and financial reports from just $4.95 per month.
Also available are Simple CRM, full accounting management, cash planning etc.

Used by over 300 businesses in over 30 countries we are quickly building a global presence.

Signup today at www.billfaster.com and experience the simplicity yourself!

Phone: +353 (0)86 8069532
Email: sales@billfaster.com

Profitero has developed a pricing service to simplify the complex and time-consuming process of monitoring competitors’ products online, which enables retailers to be more efficient and effective with their pricing strategy. The Profitero pricing platform reduces the manual effort involved in collecting and assessing pricing information, helping retailers to increase sales and profit margins.

Retailers use the software to monitor online prices, stock availability, shipping costs and benchmark product prices against their competitors; retailers can also duplicate the online prices in stores. With more and more retailers moving online, the company is also replacing the need for in-store price checks, which are done by offline retailers, with its robust, efficient online price collection model. They also plan to expand to the US market.

Currently monitoring 27.5 million products across 2,500 retail websites, the company hopes to grow this number to 100 million by June 2012. Profitero customers include, among others, market research group Nielsen and leading retailers such as Tesco Direct and Worten.

Profitero was established in 2010; its co-founders Volodymyr Pigrukh, Dmitry Vysotski and Kanstantsin Chernysh built up their expertise in scalable technologies and enterprise sales while working at Google, IBM and Microsoft in Dublin.

A winner in the Seedcamp 2010 competition, and finalist of Dublin WebSummit 2010, Profitero also claimed the Irish Innovation Cubed award, which was run by Media Cube, IADT which provided them with one year of free office space in Media Cube, a campus-based digital media incubation centre in Dublin, Ireland.

Delta Partners is a venture capital firm investing primarily in Ireland and the United Kingdom. It has €250 million under management. Delta is among the most active early-stage investors in Europe, with a strong focus on investing in early stage technology companies. Enterprise Ireland works with entrepreneurs and business managers across the full business development cycle; its priority is to grow export sales from Irish-owned companies. UK-based start-up venture fund Seedcamp and serial entrepreneur and angel investor Simon Murdoch, former vice president of Amazon.co.uk and now venture partner of UK-based Octopus Ventures, are also equity investors in the company.

Then they discover more cows who have also been affected by the lightning. They team up and proceed to “borrow” an RV and go on a tour around Ireland, accidentally catching criminals and testing out the sports equipment that they find in their getaway vehicle!

The characters include Christy, a young bullock without fear or common sense, Dee, who has been transformed by lightning into a computer boffin, Bernie the Femme Fatale, Peadar who is a fluent Irish speaker, Angus, a brawny Scottish bull, Heffernan, a mechanically-minded heifer and bossy Pat, who erroneously believes he is the leader and the brainiest and most street savvy of the pack.

As they travel they discover the secret world of the Irish people – but will we ever discover what made the Mad Cows so human?

The series is aimed specifically at 6 to 10 year olds, but has the potential to become a cult favourite, regardless of age!!

Further Information:
Keg Kartoonz are an animation production company based at Media Cube, IADT, Kill Avenue and are the creators of the popular Fadó Fadó series. For more information contact Fionnghuala Ní Néill, Media Cube, IADT, Kill Avenue at 01-2394750.

The Blackrock Animation Festival 2011 was launched with a call for entries at the Media Cube, IADT. Details and rules for entry can be found at http://iloveblackrock.ie/animation-festival

Organised by the Blackrock Business Network and supported by the Dun Laoghaire Institute of Design and Technology (IADT), the Festival will include screenings and award presentations for winning entries. Blackrock Animation Festival events will take place on Saturday 27th August.

To showcase the animation competition entries, a selection of films will be shown on Saturday 27th August at the Blackrock ‘Pop Up’ cinema at Urban Junction, Main Street, Blackrock, Co.Dublin and awards and prizes will be presented.

A Blackrock business community initiative, the purpose of the Animation Festival and Competition is to encourage emerging and existing talents in animation and storytelling both in Ireland and abroad. This is the first year of these awards and it is planned that this will be a yearly event.

Speaking at the launch, Festival Director, Fionnghuala Ni Neill said: “Blackrock is a thriving and vibrant town and our Animation Festival will reflect the diversity of businesses here as well as the range of events and activities going on. The Irish animation industry is hugely important to Ireland and is well regarded internationally. The talent is exeptional and we are thrilled as a town to showcase it.

Media Cube Manager, Martin Hogan commented: “I would like to congratulate Fionnghuala and members of the Blackrock Business Network on their sterling work designed to showcase Animation and Animation Graduates. I have no doubt that the Blackrock Animation Festival will become a well regarded annual event.”

Cloudware has developed an innovative and cost effective way for schools and parents to keep track of the children in their care.

Since its launch in 2010, Aladdin Schools is used daily by 1,000s of principals, secretaries and teachers in primary schools around Ireland to simplify admin, whilst parents can get up to date information about school events via the integrated text messaging system.

To view a demo video, read what customers say about Aladdin, or to find out more about the costs and benefits of this award winning software service, visit www.aladdinschools.com

Profitero is a real-time competitor monitoring service for online retailers.

Profitero helps online retailers maximise their profits via actionable sales analytics. Starting with competitors’ prices, stock availability, new products and much more.

Profitero automatically monitors competitive information (price, shipping, web presence, customer feedback, etc.) on a daily basis, and benchmarks each product against the competition, suggesting priority products to work on, actions to take, and the monitoring of sales impact from actions already taken.

Profitero was one of the winners of Seedcamp 2010 (http://seedcamp.com/) and was one of the twelve startups chosen out of more than 900 companies accross the world.

Profitero is supported by Enterprise Ireland- the Irish government agency for the development and growth of Irish enterprises in world markets, and HotHouse Venture Programme.

For more information, visit www.profitero.com

Profitero, based in Media Cube, the only digital media campus based incubation centre in the country, has put giant retailers such as Asda, Tesco, Amazon, Argos and Dixons Media company on the alert by releasing an infographic based on their research of 17,697 prices from online retailers that were collected across the UK. Now they are targetting the Irish online retail market.
Martin Hogan, the Manager of Media Cube commented, “There are some companies you instinctively know are going to succeed and Profitero not only had a good product and sound business plan, they were also hungry to succeed. ”

Competitor monitoring, which includes tracking competitors’ prices, stock availability, new and delisted products, is a key element in successful price management for online and offline retailers. It is also a time consuming task. Profitero offers an easy to deploy web service that solves this problem in minutes. When a retailer is able to view a rival’s prices it allows them to formulate better offers to win back the consumer almost immediately. Profitero also offers an Alerts service that also informs retailers when their prices are too low or too high. This data driven insight gives retailers the opportunity to react to competitive price changes as they happen and to formulate better offers to win back the consumer almost immediately.

With over 40,950,000 internet shoppers in the UK alone, over 30,712,500 of these consumers shop based on the best price offered to them. Profitero have researched how UK online retailers rank by price in the most popular categories. These categories researched include ‘DIY Car and Garden’, ‘Sound and Vision’ and ‘Home Electrical’ to name but a few.” explained Volodymyr Pigrukh, CEO of Profitero.
“As the brighter, longer evenings and DIY season are upon us UK consumers may be interested in Profitero’s findings that out of the retailers researched, Asda is the cheapest for ‘DIY Car and Garden’ category. However, within the categories of ‘Home Electrical’ and ‘PC and Gaming’, Amazon and Dixons are the cheapest online retailers from the sample to shop.”

“There is a definite need for Profitero in the Irish retail market. Irish consumers are more budget and value conscious than ever before and we aim to capture that data so that the Irish shopper will be informed of their options before they buy.”
Profitero is a company that had been recognised as “one to watch” from it’s start up phase. It was one of the winners of the European Seedcamp 2010 competition and the winner of Irish Innovation Cubed 2010.