Want to get the down-low on what the Dogpatch Startup Community has been up to? This is your go-to weekly checkpoint. In this week’s blog: the Irish-Egyptian founder behind compliance startup Protostars which just raised €300K, Inspeq AI latest partnership with world-leading IT firm HCLTech, Gaingels VC unveils Top 100 LGBTQIA+ Founders, and the picture-perfect partnership: Olus Education x Canva. Keep reading…

Meet Irish-Egyptian founder behind compliance startup Protostars

Driven by an innate need to make a positive social impact, founder Kim McKayed set up compliance startup Protostars with co-founder Mohamed Fayez in 2023, and is scaling it in Dogpatch Labs, after returning from a startup sabbatical in France. What’s different about Protostars? It cleverly uses LLMs to co-exist not compete with cybersecurity tools. His tech has garnered huge interest from the European startup scene, securing a place in Paris’s Station F accelerator and winning the EY startup academy in Frankfurt. With interest in Protostars building and a recent raise of €300k through Enterprise Ireland’s HPSU fund, McKayed now eyes up €2M raise in 2025 for its AI-powered cyber resilience platform.

Fun fact: Protostars is now a registered supplier for new Irish government-funded Cyber Grants Schemes (managed by EI on behalf of Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment), which covers 80% of cybersecurity consultancy costs for SMEs trading internationally.

The Business Post has the full Protostars interview

Inspeq AI announces partnership with world-leading IT firm HCLTech 

Exciting news for Founders Talent Accelerator portfolio company Inspeq AI, and Dogpatch Labs startup member, which announced a strategic partnership with one of largest IT consulting firms in the world – HCLTech – to accelerate Gen AI development.

Raising $1.1M in early 2024 (led by Sure Valley Ventures) to deploy LLMs safely, Inspeq built an advanced RAI Ops platform to help enterprises govern and safeguard Gen AI applications.

Co-founders Apoorva Kumar and Ramanujam MV also competed as Ireland’s representative in the Startup World Cup 2024 semi-finals in Silicon Valley, going head-to-head with the world’s top startups for $1M investment prize.

Learn more about Founders Talent Accelerator

Gaingels VC Unveils Top 100 LGBTQIA+ Founders

US investor Gaingels, which houses its Irish base in Dogpatch, and its founder David Beatty is a regular supporter of our DEI initiatives, is a leading venture investment syndicate in support of diversity, inclusive of the LGBTQIA+ community and allies in the venture capital space. Each year, it curates a list of 100 exceptional and inspiring LGBTQIA+ founders from across the world who are shaping the future of business. The 2024 list is now live.

To launch the third edition of this highly renowned list, and to mark National Coming Out Day, the team launched the Top 100 at Nasdaq HQ, with a special view of the bell-ringing and a billboard feature.

Want to connect with Gaingels VC? Let Dogpatch help you

A Picture-Perfect Partnership: Olus Education x Canva

Newest edtech member to Dogpatch’s startup community, Olus Education recently announced its partnering up with the $26 billion design startup Canva to transform classrooms. As the only Irish training partner for Canva and one of just three partners across Ireland and the UK, Olus is a tech trusted by teachers and is obsessed with how to help schools succeed with digital learning.

Join Olus Education as a fellow Dogpatch startup