Healy Hynes of Beagel.

Local property start up selected for US accelerator programme

A company headed up by an Athlone man is the first Irish PropTech company to be selected to take part in the 2021 MassChallenge Program. Selected from over 3,000 companies from 20 countries, Beagel, whose CEO is Healy Hynes, will now be working with the Boston-based accelerator to introduce its bidding service to the world's largest real estate market.

Beagel is an online bidding engine based at the Midlands Innovation and Research Centre at AIT East Campus.

Founded in 2009, MassChallenge accelerated more than 1,900 startups in its first 10 years. These companies together have raised more than $4.3 billion in funding and generated $2.5 billion in revenue.

“MassChallenge selects but a handful of what it calls Impact Startups every year. These are companies that it sees as making a difference in the world,” according to Beagel CEO Healy Hynes, “and we are absolutely delighted to be the first Irish Proptech company to make the cut. “We look forward to working with MassChallenge, their Corporate and Industry partners to build and accelerate our real estate bidding service into the US market.”

According to Mr Hynes, MassChallenge partners include the likes of IBM, Nasa, BAE systems, the ISS (International Space Station), KPMG, Oracle, Mitsubishi, Wells Fargo and many other.

Speaking at Davos in 2016 then MassChallenge CEO John Harthorne said the point of the organisation is to make the world a better place through startups. “This is a massive step forward for Beagel and an enormous validation of what we’ve been doing,” said Beagel CEO Healy Hynes. “By partnering with MassChallenge we are now bringing our innovative bidding service to the world's largest real estate market.”

According to Hynes, the response to date has been absolutely phenomenal. “We’ve been blown away by the reaction,” he said. “No more than here in Ireland, The US market has a problem that we’re glad to be solving.”

Only 38 companies from outside the US were selected to take part, further reinforcing the significance of the step Beagel has now taken. In addition to the extensive MassChallenge network of supports, Beagel will also be competing for $3M in non-dilutive cash prizes in a few weeks time.

“Whilst it would be nice to win the money,” said Mr Hynes, “we’re in this for the bigger picture. For us the goal is to further our traction in the US market and work with the MassChallenge team to secure more partnership and clients in the US”

“It’s a testament to the product that the Beagel team has built over the years that it can as easily translate to the US market as it can the Irish. It's something we’ve been incredibly conscious of. We’re not building just for the local market, we’re building for the global market.

“A decision was made in March of last year to start developing our Enterprise product. It was risky at the time, as nobody knew what was going to happen, but we knew it was a risk worth taking.

“The work done by our development team over the last 12 months has been nothing short of phenomenal and it’s a great recognition of the effort that they’ve put in that the value can be seen globally.”

Beagel is still open for business in Ireland, Mr Hynes is keen to emphasise. “We’ve been delighted to be able to help Irish agents and look forward to supporting more and more in coming months. Ireland is genuinely at the cutting edge of the bidding service revolution and we’ll be here for our clients for many years to come”.