Carrigaline entrepreneur scoops top business award
A Cork entrepreneur has won this year’s Best Business Idea Award in a national business competition.
Dr Martin O’Reilly won the Best Business Idea Award at the national final of Ireland’s Best Young Entrepreneur 2019 (IBYE) competition.
The Carrigaline native is the co-founder and CEO of Output Sports, which developed a system of wearable performance analytics. Martin won the award and a €15,000 investment, following pitches at an event held at Google’s European HQ in Dublin.
The new tech will allow coaches to understand an athlete’s performance in greater detail. The system is designed to streamline the off-field athlete performance optimisation process.
It is capable of testing an athlete’s performance profile, such as strength, power, balance, speed, mobility, and tracks their exercise programmes. The process is completed using wearable sensors and analysing the data with signal processing and machine learning apps.
Output Sports, a spin-out from the UCD School of Public Health, Physiotherapy and Sports Science, was founded by Dr O’Reilly alongside Dr Darragh Whelan, Julian Eberle and Professor Brian Caulfield. The tech was developed based on research they carried out at the Science Foundation Ireland funded Insight Centre for Data Analytics at UCD.
Presenting the Awards Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation, Heather Humphreys, said: “Irish entrepreneurs are among the very best in the world. That’s because we have huge talent in every region and community in Ireland. Ireland’s Best Young Entrepreneur is about celebrating that talent.”
The judging panel for the 2019 Ireland’s Best Young Entrepreneur was co-chaired by Director of Trust and Safety at Google, Paddy Flynn and founder of TTM Group, Brian Crowley.
Dr O’Reilly said: “I am thrilled to have won the Best Business Idea Award at the final of the 2019 Ireland’s Best Young Entrepreneur competition. It is testament to the hard work and dedication of my fellow co-founders, Darragh, Julian and Brian, as we work together to translate our research outputs into what we plan to be a successful company with global reach.”
During 2019, the company’s technology was co-developed with over 40 sports sites across Ireland, Europe and the USA. Collaborations included working with Olympic level athletics organisations, the Premier League, international football teams, intercounty GAA teams, European club and international rugby teams and National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) university set-ups.
“It is a very exciting time for Output Sports with our tech being trialled around the globe as we prepare to launch our first product, ‘Output Capture’ in the near future,” concluded Dr O’Reilly.