If you own a new start or early stage company, imagine how a cash injection of €100,000 would accelerate your plans. 

With an overall prize fund of €280,000, InterTradeIreland has launched its annual Seedcorn Competition 2017 which offers a lifeline to young companies seeking to raise equity to help their business grow and develop.

Aimed at innovative companies from all sectors, the 15^th annual Seedcorn Investor Readiness Competition is the largest business competition on the island and is a must for entrepreneurs wanting to attract investment.

The registration process is easy so what's stopping you from getting started?

Do you need a reliable process to manage (or maybe create) your innovation pipeline? 

Act quickly to register your interest in the next intake of the IntertradeIreland Challenge programme and arrange a briefing. 

The Challenge programme is aimed at ambitious SMEs on the Island of Ireland committed to ongoing innovation. We are providing one to one coaching from experienced Innovation coaches over a period of 6 -7 months aimed at embedding a proven sustainable innovation process within your company – 100% free. 

The process will train you how to repeatedly capture, create, evaluate and commercialise ideas up to 6 times quicker and a fraction of the cost – fast and cheap! 

The latest quarterly (September - December 2016) InterTradeIreland Business Monitor Report issued last month shows businesses are moving into challenging times from a position of relative strength.

Aidan Gough, Strategy and Policy Director at InterTradeIreland said: “We are seeing a resilient, sustained recovery and notable symmetry in challenges faced by firms both North and South. The number of companies across the island reporting stability or growth in the last quarter has remained fairly constant at 84 per cent; however exporters continue to fare better than non-exporters with 51 per experiencing growth compared to 36 per cent.” 

Key Findings:

• 98 per cent have no plan in place to deal with the consequences of Brexit
• 51 per cent of businesses in cross-border sales concerned about currency/exchange rate
• More than a quarter of growing businesses (28 per cent) have indicated they are experiencing difficulties recruiting appropriate skills for their businesses.
• 45 per cent of all businesses surveyed noted rising energy costs as a current issue for their business.
• 49 per cent of businesses surveyed noted rising overheads (apart from energy) as a current concern.

In this month’s blog, Connor Sweeney, our Seedcorn Manager, takes us through the essential tips to perfect your pitch - from preparing well, researching your audience and remembering that in every presentation that you give, you are selling something, hence each presentation will be different.

Considering exporting to the Republic of Ireland?

In 2015, the Republic of Ireland accounted for 61 per cent of Northern Ireland’s exports to the EU and for 34 per cent of Northern Ireland’s total exports.

What is CETA, and what does it mean?

CETA, the “Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement”, is the new Canada – EU trade deal that has taken eight years to hammer out. It opens up many doors for Ireland to sell into this growing, culturally similar, developed country, and this was made possible by the trading clout of the European Union.

It’s particularly welcome for small business, employees, the professions, exporting companies and those who believe international trade is good for our economic, political and social development.

In this article Susan from the Positive Economist examines the deal in more detail.

I came across this article recently and found it very poignant. We hear about depression a lot in the news but this article focusses on the impact of that on the business as well as the person.

The article begins - Entrepreneurship is full of ups and downs, and this stress can potentially lead to mental health problems and depression. For an entrepreneur, a state of depression has unique work life ramifications owing to the fact that their personal health directly affects their business’s health. It can be a dark and ugly circle, with poor business performance worsening the depression.

It could be that entrepreneurship simply isn’t for you, but if you think that this isn’t the case, letting the depression win and giving up the business isn’t likely to make things any better. This is only an attempt to sidestep the depression when the only real way to deal with it is to tackle it head on.