Well we had our introductory session on the GMIT EPP last Thursday and I must report that I'm very optimistic about the content and activities planned. It was also great to meet up with 8 other entrepreneurial individuals who are in the same boat as myself, with big dreams and small budgets!

Only two of the ideas were in some way similar but all the rest are very different which should make for a very interesting education for all of us. Here's looking forward to the rest of the course over the next year.

GlobalGreyhounds (our greyhound racing marketplace business) has been fortunate enough to be accepted for the GMIT EPP (Galway Mayo Institute of Technology, Enterprise Platform Program). Candidate startups had to do a presentation to a panel of experts. To be honest I thought we (or more precisely I) had flunked it! My presentation was lousy; I complete ran out of time and failed to convey several important points. Lucky for me though they retained my presentation diskette and must have thoroughly examined it in their own time. I believe there was a total of 15 presentations but I'm not sure how many original applicants there were. Those 15 were whittled down to 10 companies who will now be taken on for the 1 year program.

Last week we all applied for Enterprise Ireland CORD (Commercialisation of R&D) financial support. Unfortunately the place on the program is not inclusive of this financial support. Fingers crossed there! The program commences on October 24th and to be honest I'm not fully sure what it involves yet. Mentorship seems to be the most important element and a welcome one from our point of view. The funding would be nice too but more than anything else right now we need the advice of some people with marketing, legal and financial experience. Both of us have a techie background and our shortcomings in other departments are beginning to hurt our growth