When the Covid-19 crisis hit, High Potential Start Up, Empiric Logic, repositioned the business to address new challenges
Key Takeouts
- High Potential Start Up ‘Empiric Logic’ hit by Covid-19 as they prepared for seed funding
- CEO Gareth O’Sullivan applied for Enterprise Ireland’s ‘Business Financial Planning Grant’ which helped the team to re-evaluate their planning in the wake of Covid-19
- Empiric Logic was able to connect with a local advisory company with a substantial background in business planning and finance
Key Takeouts
- High Potential Start Up ‘Empiric Logic’ hit by Covid-19 as they prepared for seed funding
- CEO Gareth O’Sullivan applied for Enterprise Ireland’s ‘Business Financial Planning Grant’ which helped the team to re-evaluate their planning in the wake of Covid-19
- Empiric Logic was able to connect with a local advisory company with a substantial background in business planning and finance
Covid-19 has thrown up an unprecedented number of challenges for every business, particularly start-ups that could be at the very beginning of their business plans and in the early stages of establishing a flourishing business. For a company established in 2019, 2020 could have been the year in which they raised funding, developed further their product range, and got their offerings in front of potential clients through meetings, trade shows and more. All that was thrown into jeopardy by Covid-19.
To help clients navigate through this challenging time, Enterprise Ireland (EI) is offering a Covid-19 ‘Business Financial Planning Grant’, which provides financial support of up to €5,000 (100% grant funded) for engagement with an approved third-party consultant. The offer is designed to encourage companies to be proactive in developing a detailed financial plan that identifies funding needs and potential sources of funding. This allows the client work with an expert to prepare a detailed financial and business plan with forecasts and assumptions to help reposition the business to address challenges presented by the Covid-19 crisis.
One EI client that has availed of the grant is Empiric Logic, a High Potential Start Up (HPSU) company that began trading in August 2019. “Covid hit us at a time when we were aiming to onboard a number of new customers,” explains CEO Gareth O’Sullivan. “We also had some existing customers with whom we were hoping to extend contracts. In addition, we were in the middle of preparing for seed funding. So it really couldn’t have happened at a worse time.
“We’ve lost a couple of customers; thankfully our business has increased with another. But the uncertainty has also led to a lot of investors holding off on new investments – so it’s been very challenging.”
Empiric Logic is a software as a service bioinformatics company that provides a platform to enable organisations derive greater value from their biologically generated data, solving many of the challenges associated with aggregating, correlating, analysing and gaining valuable insights from complex health-related data. The company has already won a number of significant clients, including Open Orphan, a rare disease and orphan drugs pharma services company. With a significant role to play in supporting the more accurate, faster and more secure development of drugs and treatments, the platform offered by Empiric Logic is even more important during this time.
“Essentially what we’re doing is analysing data on behalf of other companies and providing a platform to enable owners of data get more from it,” explains Gareth. “Our [main] target market is obviously pharmaceuticals and the medical space. We pivoted slightly to look at some Covid-related data analytics, to see if we could offer something there. One of our existing customers and a potential new customer are looking at Covid-related treatments, and we’re hoping to help them with their data.”
The importance of flexibility
While the pharma space is understandably important for a company like Empiric Logic, flexibility is vital for a start-up, and so Gareth and his team have spent a lot of time looking at how their platform can be used in a variety of other sectors. “From our perspective, we see applications for our product across a wide range of verticals as well as pharma. We’ve looked at areas where we can support companies working in the medtech sector, biotech, nutrition, foodstuffs, even further into biothreats – we recently completed a pathogen analysis proposal to help analyse viral and bacterial presence in an environment.”
The need to be flexible has taken on a whole new importance in 2020, when everyone’s plans simply flew out the window. “We had just come through the review with EI, and we intended to hopefully raise some funding early in 2020, which would give us six months to build the platform out more substantially and take it to market in Q4; go to events, get in front of potential clients and showcase the platform. But as a result of Covid, this has all changed. We have tried to maintain contact as best we can though Zoom meetings and phone calls – but none of that is a great substitute for networking and face-to-face meetings.”
Gareth was encouraged to look at the €5k Business Financial planning grant, which was approved quickly and proved invaluable. “We’d done some rudimentary business plan development; this was offered as a way to re-evaluate your planning in the wake of Covid-19, and we felt it was a great opportunity to revamp our business plan. And it worked well for us – it was a very useful process. It also helped us connect with a local advisory company; up to that point we had been managing our books with a book keeping service, but this process allowed us work with a company that had a more substantial background in business planning and finance.
“EI is a lifeline during times like this; the Business Financial planning grant is just one of the many supports offered, and it’s helped refine our message to potential investors.”
This grant enabled Empiric Logic to look at Covid as simply a bump on the road in terms of their business – getting that expert insight and practical advice has helped the company plan for a brighter and more secure future, with more clients across more sectors. Most recently, Empiric Logic was approved for a feasibility grant, which they will use to investigate other sectors for their platform. “We’re in contact with a medtech consultant, and we’re hoping to develop more substantial use cases for our platform that enables us to prospect into verticals other than biotech and pharma, which predominantly we’ve been focused on until now.”
