Galway start up gearing up for Best Young Entrepreneur national finals

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Galway Daily business Galway woman gearing up to fight to be Ireland's Best Young Entrepreneur

Correction: an earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Elizabeth McGloughlin is from Galway. She is from Limerick and did her Masters here.

The national finals of the Best Young Entrepreneur competition are approaching next week, and the founder of a Galway based start up Elizabeth McGloughlin is preparing for the final run.

Local Enterprise Office Galway’s finalist for the title of Ireland’s Best Young Entrepreneur 2019, 30 year old Elizabeth McGloughlin is the co-founder of city-based company Tympany Medical.

Tympany is designing and developing a novel combined access and visualisation device which will enable ear surgeons to ‘see around the corners’ of the ear canal.

This will allow surgeons to perform a greater number of ear operations without having to resort to highly invasive surgery.

Elizabeth McGloughlin, who is originally from Limerick, graduated from the UCD School of Medicine and did her Masters at NUIG.

She won the Best Business Idea category at the Regional finals of the Irish Best Young Entrepreneur competition in Mayo back in June.

Galway Daily Business Galway woman headed to national final of the Best Young Entrepreneur competition
Photo Martina Regan

Since then she and the other finalists have had the chance to meet and discuss their businesses and ideas with Minister for Business Heather Humphreys and Minister for Trade, Employment, Business Pat Breen.

The IBYE competition Final will take place on Sunday, September 15 at Google HQ in Dublin.

The 24 IBYE Finalists for 2019 will be competing for a €100,000 fund across the three categories.

The winner of the Best Business Idea will receive a €15,000 investment with the runner up securing a €5,000 investment.

The Best Start-Up Business and Best-Established Business winners will receive a €25,000 investment each with the runners up in those categories each receiving €5,000.

While the 2019 Ireland’s Best Young Entrepreneur selected from the three category winners will receive an additional €20,000 grand prize.

The winners of last year’s IBYE competition were Conor O’Loughlin of Glofox who won the Best-Established Business and the overall IBYE Award for 2018.

Alan Hickey of Vromo (formerly WeBringg) in Fingal, Dublin was the Best Start Up Business winner, while Galway’s Brendan Boland of Loci Orthopaedics won the Best Business Idea for 2018.