Trinity Launchbox Alumni win Enterprise Ireland Pitch Night in Silicon Valley

Posted on: 09 December 2015

Recent graduates of Trinity’s startup accelerator programme, LaunchBox, have achieved recognition from Enterprise Ireland and Silicon Valley investors on a recent trip to San Francisco.

UniTuition, founded by Trinity graduates Orla McCallion and Sean Judge, enables college students to find specialist tutors quickly and easily online. The pair won an all expenses paid trip to Silicon Valley when they were named the winners of the Trinity Launchbox pitch night in September. They used this to fund participation in Enterprise Ireland’s Silicon Access Programme, a two week business focused trip to Silicon Valley. While there, they met with university staff, students and investors from the area.

Notably, the pair won the programme pitch night, beating intense competition that included companies with over €1 million in revenue. Runners up were Grasshopper, an ecological based skateboard brand, and CX Index, a provider of customer experience metrics. Their prize was a trip back to San Francisco whenever they decide to return next.

“The collaborative culture in the Bay Area was inspiring and hugely helpful,” stated Orla. “I would recommend any startup aiming to target the US to make a trip over as early on as possible and talk to as many people as possible. We learned things during our trip it would have been impossible to learn from our offices in Dublin.”

The highlight of the trip for Sean was being based in Rocketspace, a technology campus in the heart of San Francisco. “With companies like UBER and Spotify starting off there, the sense of expectation amongst the current residents is contagious.”

UniTuition launched in Ireland in March of this year, and has already expanded into the UK market. The company will be opening a seed funding round in early 2016.