Beats Medical Wins Google’s Adopt a Startup Programme

Beats Medical has been named the winner of the Google Adopt a Startup Programme following a dragon’s den style final held in the Foundry at Google’s EMEA headquarters in Dublin.

Beats Medical is a pioneering medical company founded by an experienced doctor, physiotherapist and technologist with the goal of revolutionising how Patients with Parkinsons are treated, assessed and monitored. It’s award winning solution is helping to reduce treatment costs, improve mobility and increase the standard of living of patients with Parkinsons disease.

Photo Dogpatch Labs

Beats Medical beat off tough competition from seven other finalists to win the prize of €10,000 in AdWords credit. Eac of the eight finalists had to make a seven minute pitch on their developed digital strategies to members of Google Ireland’s senior leadership team and external judges Patrick Walsh, Managing Director of DogPatch Labs and Kevin Sherry, Executive Director, Global Business Development with Enterprise Ireland.

Brendan Courtney and Sonya Lennon’s company Frockadvisor placed 2^nd and received a €5,000 in AdWords credit while online dog minder service House My Dog  placed 3rd and  picked up a cheque for €3,000 in AdWords credit.

Speaking at the final, Colin Goulding of Google Ireland’s Startup programme said,

“This year’s Adopt a Startup programme once again showcased the fantastic level of entrepreneurship and innovation being shown from startups from every corner of Europe. It really made our job a lot harder in picking the overall winner.”

“Beats medical was selected by the judges as the overall winner because they have a business changing innovation which is based on a clear customer need that integrates Google Voice Activation to provide a hands free experience. They also demonstrated a close collaboration with their mentors to really understand their business goals, customer needs and then worked together to deliver on these goals.”

32 leading Startups from across Ireland and the rest of Europe were selected to participate in a 90 day programme of mentoring sessions with Google Ireland’s Startup Support Teams. Over the course of the programme, each Startup was assigned a Startup Support Team who worked with them to to develop and execute digital strategies.These 32 Startups were then shortlisted to eight finalists who took part in the live final at Google’s EMEA HQ.

“This is the fourth installment of our Adopt a Startup Programme where we work with young, entrepreneurial companies from Ireland and the rest of Europe, to help them hone their digital skills so they are strongly positioned to succeed in the digital economy.  The companies which participated last year have all taken the skills developed during the mentoring programme back into their companies and are executing digital strategies to develop their businesses,” said Paddy Flynn, Head of Google Ireland’s Startup programme.

“The businesses taking part have been selected from Ireland’s vibrant Startup community and have previously received VC funding or taken part in accelerator programmes.  This programme is a further opportunity for Google to support the Irish Startup ecosystem in a meaningful way,” he said.

Previous winners of the programme include Jobbio the online recruitment platform and innovative community-based social enterprise,  FoodCloud and Jobbio the online recruitment platform.

Iseult Ward, CEO of FoodCloud says that the mentoring received from Google was invaluable and helped their business to grow. “Our biggest learning was to start by working backwards at your core business objectives, this is essential to developing an effective digital marketing strategy with minimal resources, then the best plan, content and platforms will follow. We have a much more strategic approach to our digital marketing since participating in the programme – for example the number of volunteers that have signed up through our website has doubled.”

The Adopt a Startup Programme forms part of Google’s commitment to supporting the Startup community in Ireland through mentoring events such as Ireland’s Best Young Entrepreneur on which the winners of the Adopt a Startup Programme will also receive a place for next year’s programme.

In 2015, Google announced a partnership with Dogpatch Labs to further support the development of Irish startups.  Google also hosts a number of community events with partners like Startup Weekend and Enterprise Ireland.  Irish Startups also avail of direct support from Google for Entrepreneurs programs in Dublin, London and the US.

For more information go to events.withgoogle.com/adoptastartup