Interview

Direct Sitters is such a simple idea, and in hindsight one we wished we had thought of first! Direct Sitters provide quality CRB checked, fully insured, vetted and trustworthy house sitters to wait for engineers, repairmen and home deliveries, saving you the hassle - simple! Even more simple and impressive is the pretty low loan of £2700 that Marcus Simpson, then in his early 20’s gai...
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For those of you who think it can take an age to start a business don’t panic - it doesn’t have to be that way! Philip Crilly is a case in point - having conceived, set up and launched Eatibbles within a three month period. When Philip mentions in one of his answers “back in February 2013”, he is not speaking ironically - he literally only started the process of starti...
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After Jo Jaeger-Booth was made redundant she decided to take the opportunity to set up an online fashion platform myfashionshop.co.uk aimed at the student market. Still a relatively young entrepreneur herself, she was the first person to be successfully awarded with a Startup Loan in the North West of England and is using the money to launch a online fashion magazine for the student mark...
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Kate Jackson's Twitter bio starts “Ex lawyer now entrepreneur” and that’s enough to get you interested. After all you don’t imagine many commercial lawyers leaving the high paid world of Law to do something with that ‘great big startup idea’. But that’s exactly what Kate did by quitting the City to begin a tech startup some 6 years ago. Six years on and Ka...
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A couple of weeks ago Seedcorn launched this year's all-island Ireland Seedcorn competition for startups and early stage startups. Big bucks of a prize fund worth €280,000 will be divided up between 9 winning start-ups and so we thought it wise to interview one of last years regional winners - Albert Quigley Founder of Gnarly Adventure, an online inspiration engine for activiti...
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Crunch, formed in the Summer of 2007, provides online accounting services and software to freelancers, contractors and small businesses and has quickly established itself as a leading player in the online Accountancy market in the UK. We chatted to Darren Fell, Founder and Managing Director of Crunch on the business itself, the problems it aims to solve and the typical issues that freelancers fac...
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Recently appointed by the UK government as an ‘entrepreneur in residence’, Rekha Mehr, a startup founder herself, has been given the responsibility for championing the small business and startup sector. Since Startacus is all about self starters doing something with ‘that idea’ they have always had, we thought it only right to chat with Rekha and to find out a little more ...
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Memeoirs is a webapp that allows anyone to create a physical book out of emails and is the first commercial project for Giacomo Miceli and startup Fitmemes. Giacomo self interviewed on Startacus to tell us all little more about Memeoirs and his opinions on being a self-starter full stop.  How did you come up with the idea for Memeoirs? Like so many startups before us, we started buildi...
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PlayTank is currently developing what they call a productive entertainment platform with a goal to make it easier for people to get into the process of taking that first big step with the creative ideas that they have. Users will be able to develop and seek feedback by matching their wits and skills against each other while collectively developing compelling and creative ideas, projects and conce...
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James Whelton started hacking and coding at just 9 years old. Then just a few years later he co-founded CoderDojo, a free coding club for young people in his native Cork. CoderDojo has now become a global movement with over 16,000 young people learning how to code in 23 countries worldwide. Pretty impressive! With the 2nd Annual CoderDojo Mentor Conference happening this weekend in Slane Castle, w...
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An Interview with Erin Spens, Editor of the rather fabulous Boat Magazine, a nomadic publication that focuses on one city each issue.I met Erin Spens briefly whilst her and her team were in Derry working on their latest edition of the Boat magazine. I’ll admit, I loved the idea. They go to cities, find their stories, write about them and leave again. Their turnaround of content when they act...
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Startacus speaks to Timothy Armoo, 18 CEO and Founder of Doodlar, a recent start-up driven to modernise the way we fundraise using fashion of all things...Tell us a bit more about Doodlar.Doodlar is a platform which uses design and community to raise funding and awareness for the neediest causes. Every month, we partner up with a charity who are fighting a specific cause, it could be bringing clea...
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