Northern Ireland company Kinva took the top prize at the first SheGenerate Showcase organised by AwakenHub on 14th June.

The Showcase featured pitches from a selection of AwakenHub’s 1st SheGenerate cohort, giving them the opportunity to share their business plans with an audience of fellow entrepreneurs and investors as well as giving them the chance for one of them to win £500 on the night (chosen live by the audience).

The final six pitches were from:

  • Michelle Connor – Kinva is a secure platform connecting healthcare and other professionals directly with their clients and patients to provide them with tailored therapeutic plans.
  • Lara Hanlon – Portion Collaborative was founded by Hanlon, a former senior designer at IBM. Her business focuses on food technologies.
  • Cate O’Connor – Boxable is a corporate gifting business that uses sustainable Irish products.
  • Katrina Gormley – NumeraSee provides face-to-face and online mentoring in maths for primary school-aged children and their parents. It was founded last October.
  • Lisa Breslin ­– Imagine Lab is a creative studio specialising in branding strategies, and graphic and motion design for SMEs
  • Bernie McTiernan – Baba Dreams makes high quality, safe, durable and reusable products for children. Comfort for both parent and child is at the core of the design process.

Over the last eight months, 56 women from 51 very early stage start up businesses were selected to participate in the first ever all island of Ireland accelerator lite programme – SheGenerate made possible by the support of Rethink Ireland SED Fund, Ulster Bank NI & Pulsar NI. We sponsored eight women from Northern Ireland with early stage STEM businesses. One of them was the winning company, Kinva, while NumeraSee took a runners up prize.

The Pulsar Shegenerate STEM8

Over 160 women applied and were whittled down to 56 participants. They participated in a series of 6 half-day workshops plus over 50 bespoke Big Sister sessions with domain experts from across the AwakenHub community of allies in Ireland, UK and the USA.

The quality of the 6 Shegenerate finalists’ pitches was really high and it was great to see how much all the participants have got from this programme and the wider Awakenhub community. We want to congratulate every member of the cohort on the work they have done refining their business plans, polishing their pitches and bringing new focus to their ideas in a supportive and collaborative environment.

Awakenhub is now recruiting the next cohort – SheGenerate 2.0 -so if you a very early stage or want-to-be woman founder on the island of Ireland (or looking to move back home imminently), want to be part of a community of fellow founders and are willing to commit to an eight month programme of activity to help you get traction, then apply for SheGenerate2.0.

Applications close 5pm on Friday 9 September.

  • You must be available to join an online information session at 1pm on Tuesday 13 September(30-40 mins) to get shortlisted.
  • There are fewer spaces available this time around, so while it’s super easy to apply it will require commitment and a bit of grit – but don’t let that stop you from applying!
  • The programme is open to all industry sectors including social enterprise/ social impact driven founders.

Here’s a video review of the cohort’s achievements produced by Lyn Mutch, a participant and founder of Noodlehorse Media: