In just ten months, this Irish startup has secured $600,000 in funding, established a partnership with Ammunition - the same design firm which created Beats headphones- graduated from the PCH Highway1 and Orange Fab accelerator programs in San Francisco and won Best Start Up and the overall title at Ireland's Best Young Entrepreneur awards. Co-founder James Foody describes the journey so far as "short but exhilarating".
So how did the idea for Ayda, a pregnacy planning app, come about? James Foody says it all started following a conversation its co-founders had at a hackathon event in Dublin in November 2014 about modern wearables not having real impact on problems that matter. Ayda wants to help couples get pregnant easier and faster in a natural way.
Fast-forward ten months later to December 2015, which saw James take home the top award at this year's Irish Best Young Entrepreneur Awards 2015, as well as the title of Best Startup. Asked about why he decided to take part in the national competition, which this year received 1,400 applications - a 40% increase on last year - James says: "I am extremely competitive, I got involved because I thought Ayda with our team I had a great chance of winning."
"The experience was refreshing. It can be quite isolating being a young entrepreneur in Ireland some times. It's really good to know that there are other people out there going through the same problems that I would now feel comfortable contacting for advice."
These sentiments are echoed by last year's IBYE winner, Eamon Keane of Xpreso Software, who said that he was surprised to see the breadth of good young entrepreneurs out there that you wouldn’t necessarily see. For Eamon, it was encouraging these other young entrepreneurs were going through a lot of the same challenges.
So what does it feel like to win the title of Ireland's Best Young Entrepreneur? "Two emotions; shock and utter delight," says James.
Add to that sharing the stage with Blaine Doyle - winner of Best New Idea - who James says he had a conversation with, "this time last year in a freezing cold office - it had no heating - in Cork about ideas we had. One year on, we were both accepting awards for them."
The next big milestone for Ayda - whose offices are based in San Francisco, is launching next year, which will no doubt be helped by the €50,000 prize money which accompanies the title of Ireland's Best Young Entrepreneur. Asked what advice he would give to other young entrepreneurs, James says, "Prepare yourself to be ridiculed, prepare yourself for your competitors having 20 times the funding you do and prepare yourself for constant struggle. Accept the above points as a given, detach yourself from them emotionally and then begin."
For more information
Meet all the winners of Ireland's Best Young Entrepreneur 2015.
Find out more about Ayda.
Find out more about the IBYE competition.
Interested in setting up a company? Check out Supporting SMEs, which provides information on more than 80 Government business supports totalling over €2bn.