The Roman general Scipio is best known for his victory at the Battle of Zama in 202BC. Skippio, a Dublin start-up, wants to be best known for making it easier to get a pint.
The business was founded by Daniel Coen in 2022 and has six staff. Originally based at the IADT MediaCube in Kill O’The Grange in south Dublin, it is now headquartered in NovaUCD and to date, has raised €540,000 in funding.
Skippio has developed a platform that allows users at events such sports matches, concerts or festivals to order food and drinks ahead of time, effectively skipping the long queues.
“The idea is that the user isn’t missing any of the event or losing track of their friends by waiting in a queue. They order ahead of time and go out to collect at a designated collection point,” Coen told the Business Post.
“The idea came about from me being that customer. I was queuing at a festival for 40 minutes, missed two of my favourite acts and just gave up. Then at a match a few weeks later, the queue was nuts again and I didn’t even bother trying to get a drink.”
The business started out in March 2022 and was operational by December of that year. After a lot of persuasion, Coen convinced Fairyhouse racecourse to let him try out his platform there.
“I think they gave me the chance just to stop me annoying them. Since then we’ve done events in Leopardstown as well as Live at the Marquee in Cork and at the Bruce Springsteen gigs in Cork,” he said.
“At the Galway Races, we took the last bay of six for drinks service. We were doing twice the revenue of the others without the queues. It’s always the same, people give us a shot not knowing if it’ll work and then it takes off.”
The business has been supported by Enterprise Ireland since its early days, including going through all three stages of the New Frontiers programme
“I’ve done every step I can with them, they have been brilliant. After New Frontiers we got pre-seed start fund support and then joined the high potential start-up unit,” Coen said.
“They’ve been brilliant for advice. We’ve been invited out to Dubai because fan experience is becoming a thing there. The team EI has on the US west coast has also been in touch with us.”
Coen is bullish about Skippio’s growth prospects, and is keen to find other ways to develop the product to provide more services for consumers and clients.
“We are moving into looking at other issues beyond food and beverage to see what other problems we can help users with at events,” he said. “We want to get our first UK trial this year as well. The product is scalable and we’ll probably try to raise in about a year, at which stage we’ll be looking for around €5 million.”
This Making it Work article is produced in partnership with Enterprise Ireland