Veri have been named the winner of Google’s Adopt A Startup 2017 Autumn Programme, following a dragon’s den style final held in The Foundry at Google’s EMEA Headquarters in Dublin last night.

Veri, a Kilkenny based startup helps trainers to track and review training performance from their mobile phone – making the use of paper forms redundant, reducing administration time by up to 30% and allowing users to quality assure their training.

The seven other finalists who competed on the night were Bamboo, Dog Day Design, Holos, Tryilo, Oodlique, UrbanFox, and usheru.

Winner of the Adopt A Startup 2017 programme Veri, Founder Ann-Marie McSorley said “We put a lot of time into getting the most out of Google’s Adopt A Startup programme and this win validates the team’s hard work. We set out clear, precise objectives at the start of the programme and with the help of our Google mentors we achieved significant results across them all”.

She added “In our business we help digitise compliance for companies across various sectors including health and construction. As we are entirely web based, it’s important that people are able to find us, which is why increasing our web presence by 15% was a massive achievement. Perfectly timed in conjunction with the launch of our exciting new analytics product, the programme resulted in an increase in potential sales leads of 20%. We are absolutely delighted to be named overall winner of Google’s Adopt A Startup programme and would like to thank the team and our mentors for all the help they gave us throughout the programme”.

30 start-ups competed for a place in the final, and in the end, eight were chosen to present a seven minute pitch focusing on the results they had achieved through taking part in the Adopt A Startup Programme.   The judges – Joe Healy – High Potential Startup Division Manager, Enterprise Ireland; Colin Goulding,  Director, Global Customer Care, Google; John Phelan – National Director, Halo Business Angel Network and Vanessa Hartley – Director of Retail & Agency, Large Customer Sales UK, Google had the difficult decision of picking the winner from a superb line up of companies.

Speaking at the final, Colin Goulding, Director, Global Customer Care said, “Now in its fifth year, our Adopt A Startup Programme has had a great impact on the Irish startup community.  The key to its success is that participants are empowered to develop a business approach that suits their needs and thus has a bigger impact on helping them grow their business.  Veri joins a stellar alumni of past winners including Food Cloud, Jobbio, Logograb; Arklu and Beats Medical, all of whom have gone on to achieve scale and growth in the intervening years.

“Veri was chosen by the judges because of the significant progress they made over the 12 week mentoring programme. They based their OKR’s (Objectives and Key Results) on the results they wanted to achieve and also explained to the judges in a clear and tangible way how they would achieve growth and expand their business”.

“It wasn’t an easy decision for the judges, given the richness of talent and the achievements of our finalists over the past 12 weeks.  All our Adopt a Startup companies have shown real promise throughout the programme and I expect we’ll be hearing a lot more from them over the coming years”.

The Adopt a Startup Programme forms part of Google’s commitment to supporting the Startup community in Ireland.  Over 100 companies have participated in the programme since its inception and many have gone on to raise significant capital funding and greatly increase their employee numbers.

Other supports provided by Google to Ireland’s StartUp community include mentoring events such as Ireland’s Best Young Entrepreneur, hosting community events with partners like Startup Weekend and Enterprise Ireland and its partnership with Dogpatch Labs. Irish Startups can also avail of work spaces from Google for Entrepreneurs programmes in Dublin, London and the US.

Veri, will receive €10,000 in AdWords credit and will become eligible for the Google Cloud Platform for Startups which comes with $100,000 Google Cloud Credits. The seven runner ups will also be eligible for the programme, along with $20,000 Google Cloud Credits.

Bamboo, an order and pay app for restaurants placed 2nd in the competition and received €5,000 Google AdWord credit while, Dog Day Design placed third and walked away with €3,000 in Google AdWords credits. DogPatch Labs, Ireland’s leading tech and co-working community awarded a special prize of six months free hot desking to usheru.


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