About Us

Celebrating Ireland's Brightest Startup Stars

The National Startup Awards were founded to recognize and celebrate Ireland’s most innovative and promising startups. As the country’s premier startup awards program, we provide a platform for early-stage companies to gain national and international exposure and credibility.

Our mission is to identify Ireland’s rising stars across all industries and technologies and help them on their journey to success. We shine a light on talented founders, innovative products and services, and startups with the potential for rapid growth.

Each year, we thoroughly review startup applications from across Ireland to select the most disruptive, scalable and fundable companies. Finalists gain recognition through awards events, promotional campaigns, and startup accelerator programs. Winners take home prizes and gain invaluable media coverage and investor interest.

12 years in the making

Past National Startup Award winners have raised significant funding, exported globally, and created hundreds of jobs. We aim to promote entrepreneurship and innovation nationwide by showcasing the best Ireland has to offer.

Our awards also build critical connections between startups, business leaders, policymakers and supporters. This community increases collaboration and strengthens Ireland’s startup ecosystem. It demonstrates that Ireland is an ideal location to launch and grow a global business.

If you’re a promising startup, we encourage you to apply to the National Startup Awards. It could be a defining moment in your entrepreneurial journey. Let us help share your vision with Ireland and the world.

The National Startup Awards Team

It’s our twelveth birthday, and we can’t think of a better way to celebrate than with the very best of the Irish Startup Ecosystem!

What Startups tell us

Each year we receive feedback from Startups that the awards played a key role in:

Boosting morale.
Raising their profile on a national and international level.
Attracting new investment.
Attracting new employees.
Providing key networking opportunities with other Startups and sponsors.
Helping them refine their vision and mission through the awards entry process.

The National Startup Awards prepared GlowDX for our Seed Round and gave us a platform to tell our story.

Since winning the Startup Awards we have grown our brand dramatically, gained a LOT of interest in the company, from a commercial standpoint, but also from potential investors and VC's. We have also been approached by numerous national media sources and we are happy to say, business has never been better. Our retail range & food trucks have thrived through Covid.

We feel winning this award really validated what we were doing and helped to raise our profile, which was such a positive outcome from the win. It got industry experts interested in what we were doing. On a business development front we are almost finished with our manufacturing trials, which are taking place in the UK. We are working with our trial partners remotely and sending product samples back and forward , for analysis.

30 Nov. 2023

We are returning to the amazing Dublin City Hall and we cant wait to see all the finalists in person!

This beautiful building has been the home of the National Startup Awards since 2019 and we cant wait to see you all there.

* Submission closing date: Oct 26th @ 11.59 PM