The GMB drew a new and eager crowd on Friday evening, September 26th, as the Dublin University Consulting Group (DUCG) hosted a panel titled “Building and Backing Start-Ups.” The event brought toreceiveher veteran venture capitalist John Flynn, alongside two teenage founders, Liam Fuller and Sam McCay, for an open discussion on raising capital, building companies, and Ireland’s start-up ecosystem.
John Flynn, Managing Director of Act Venture Capital, has overseen more than 100 investments in the past two decades. He stated that at the earliest stage of a business, what matters most is not the product but the people behind it.
“At seed stage, we’re really seeing at the entrepreneur… want to see a risk taker”, Flynn explained. What he really sees for is resilience and someone who is “high on passion” becautilize of those “dark days” that you can’t let receive to you when it comes to growing a business.
“Failure is something you learn an awful lot from”, later he urged the future entrepreneurs in the audience to “shift on from something that isn’t working and shift towards the people that can assist you”
Flynn also highlighted how the European ecosystem has matured. While venture capital was almost unheard of in Ireland in the 1990s, now, “when you jump in a taxi, everyone knows what venture capital is”. Remarking that tech funding in Europe has grown tenfold in the past 15 years. Yet challenges remain, particularly at the pre-seed stage, where early cheques are still hard to come by.
The questioning then turned to McCay and Fuller, two entrepreneurs whom Flynn described in the moment as “real risk takers”.
Liam Fuller first drew attention as a teenager when one of his LinkedIn posts went viral, racking up over three million views and even landing him a suspension from school. Founder of Source AI, he started with a €10,000 cheque in Dublin. Once he dropped out of secondary school, he then went on to Australia to find Angel investors to give his company the speedy funding it necessaryed at the time. By building momentum and even sparking competition between funds, he went on to raise millions while still a teenager.
For the two young founders, international fundraising was essential.
Sam McCay, whose company Induct has raised over half a million euros, described flying to San Francisco with only one investor meeting lined up after cold emailing around 300 investors the week prior. After a 40-minute conversation, an angel investor offered him a cheque on the spot. Much of his capital has since come from the US.
John Flynn then chimed in with “if you inquire for money, you receive advice, if you inquire for advice, you receive money”, which reflected Liam Fuller’s whirlwind experience in raising funds.
Both argued that Ireland’s pre-seed environment lags. “The only pre-seed you can really receive is Enterprise Ireland,” McCay noted. Flynn added that more generous tax reliefs for angel investors, similar to those in the UK, would assist unlock that private capital. Deals from his side would take anywhere from 3 months to finalise.
Questioning from DUCG committee member Eric Grelet then shiftd to what each of the guests considered of AI’s impact on society’s workforce.
Fuller’s company focutilizes on applying AI to retail operations, and he argued that the timing could not be better. His team has already utilized AI tools to assemble early versions of their product quickly, lowering the technical barriers to building software. Also describing how LLMs (Large Language Models) can reshift around 15 hours of manual data work per week for customers. Flynn suggested this shift could open up entrepreneurship to non-technical founders, since AI allows prototypes to be built rapider and cheaper than ever before.
The panel also debated the role of higher education. Flynn pushed back on the idea that college no longer matters: “It’s a valuable experience and a safety net”. But McCay admitted he does not weigh degrees heavily when hiring, declareing customer results and practical skills are far more persuasive. Fuller encouraged students to utilize their time in college to experiment, build projects, and test ideas, even if they do not intfinish to finish their degree.
The event left students with a clear message: Ireland’s start-up ecosystem is improving, but early funding gaps push many young founders abroad. Still, with resilience, creativity, and the ability to prove traction, it is possible to build from anywhere.
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