—-PRESS RELEASE—

AirPOS Ltd, a Belfast-based software company making integrated ePOS and eCommerce software for SME retailers, announces a Series A investment.

Having achieved seed level investment in March 2010 from Silicon Valley based private investor and entrepreneur mentor, David Kirk, AirPOS Ltd are proud to have taken the Company to the next level with a Series A investment of £235,000. The funds will assist the company in developing and marketing their cutting edge retail platform that allows retailers simple and seamless stock and sales integration across their instore platforms, web stores and eventually mobile platforms.

AirPOS worked with a syndicate of investors led by the Invest Growth Fund managed by E-Synergy and also included Michael O’ Neill, Bright Sky Facilities Management and Giant Associates to raise the new finance. The company will invest the funds to accelerate the development of their unique cloud based Point of Sale and web store software, grow their rapidly expanding team, and execute rapid international expansion into Europe and the USA.

Continuing the growth of the AirPOS team the company are proud to announce the successful recruitment of Les Curran and Jason Bell. Les has joined the team as Chief Operating Officer and was previously with Kelsius and Logica. Jason has joined as Chief Technical Officer having previously founded Datasentiment and UVoucher.

Martin Neill, CEO and co-founder, said of the investment; “We are humbled by the faith the investors have shown in buying into our vision for AirPOS and are looking forward to giving retailers all over the globe a world-class software product founded in Belfast, built in Belfast and now invested in Belfast. We are also delighted with the talent we have attracted into the company and are very much looking forward to the next phase of our development, starting right now!”

David Kirk, ex Senior Vice President of AOL and Cisco Systems said of the deal: “This is like being in on the ground floor of E Bay.”

His thoughts were echoed by the company’s Chairman Tim Brundle who added: “The AirPOS team has enthusiastically developed a great product with massive growth potential. I am pleased to see that their innovation is now available to the world.”

Link to article on AirPOS.co.uk

This programme was a pilot, it was designed to see whether we could drum up enough interest to find six globally-focused tech companies in Northern Ireland and I believe we more than succeeded. I have already received two enquiries about the 2011 intake so there is plainly demand.

Sadly the end of the programme coincides with the closing of the Marquis building, which made things a little more abrupt than I was expecting. The building landlords are insisting that every business in the building makes other arrangements as they are not willing to put the investment needed to make the building properly habitable. It’s a shame as the building itself is beautiful, filled with the history of entrepreneurship.

For 2011, we need more involvement. We will be inviting the 2010 ‘graduates’ to become part of our structure. We are also looking for interested individuals to fill out some of the pages listed above – we need more mentors, more partners and we need to populate the advisory board as well.

Special thanks to Marty from AirPOS Ltd (AirPOS), Rich from Crafty Devil (Planzai), Martin from Referalot (Referalot), Patrick from R8Technology (R8YourPolitician), Lyra from Newsrupt (Qluso) and Simon from Rumble Labs (Onotate) for being our guinea pigs – and I hope it was all worthwhile.

The Europas, the TechCrunch Europe Awards 2010 for European tech companies, will be held on November 19 in London (tickets available here). Entrants have been informed by Crunchbase, our database of startups, and will be voted on by the industry. These results will influence a subsequent voting round from The Europas Advisory Board of experts, chaired by TechCrunch Europe.

But we need your votes!

There’s such a strong sense of community around the VI project in Belfast right now that I can only see it succeeding. I know it’s very early days, the proof of the pie is in the eating, yada yada ya, but forgive me for getting caught up in the whirlwind of energy surrounding this initiative – I find it invigorating.

Thanks, James!

Thanks to Tim Brundle, Andrea Clements, David Crozier, Jonathan Cusick, Richard Dale, Nick Fitzsimons, Leo Galway, Martin Gilchrist, Scott Kennedy from CFR, Patrick Lismore, Liam McGarry, Paul McKibbin, Chris McClelland, Colin Mitchell, and Lyra McKee.

(If I missed you out, message me, I’m still putting together a list here. And if you want your name linked to a web site, also message me.)

NoMoreArt blog: VI for Victory

You Want To Start Something: A Room with a VI

You can also check out more by searching Twitter for “startvi” (or click here and be directed to Twitterfall to see what’s being said.

We’d love to see some more out there.

You’ll also see who we’re following – people intimately involved in the startup community in Northern Ireland – whether that’s new startups, experienced entrepreneurs, seasoned mentors or even just ‘entrevoyeurs’ – these are all people who contribute in some way.

http://twitter.com/startvi

Wish us luck!