Exits

Mark Little, a journalist for more than 20 years, (Foreign Affairs Correspondent, Washington Correspondent and news anchor for RTE) left RTE in December 2009 to set up the social news agency, Storyful, which extracts news from the social media noise. HBAN was instrumental in arranging angel funding for Storyful, when it raised its initial round of €430k, leading to subsequent rounds totaling €3m. Mark presented to the angels in September 2010 and the HBAN business angel investor made a return of seven times his investment when Storyful was sold to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp for €18m in December 2013.

In 2011, HBAN introduced energy demand software company, Activation Energy to one of its registered business angels with a strong background in the energy sector. The HBAN business angel worked closely with the founder Patrick Liddy to realise his exit strategy. Activation Energy was acquired by Nasdaq listed EnerNOC in February 2014 with the business angel realising a significant return on his investment. “The team over at HBAN understood what industries matched my domain knowledge and to which I would add value. One of the first businesses they linked me up with was Activation Energy which turned out to be a perfect fit and fortunately for all a profitable exit opportunity!” Aidan McDonnell- Investor in Activation Energy.

Microsemi Corporation, a leading provider of semiconductor solutions, acquired Cork based Mingoa in September 2014, a leading provider of semiconductor IP for hardware accelerated Ethernet OAM and embedded tests. This was a successful exit for investors including members of the HBAN Boole Syndicate.

The initial investors, registered with the HBAN in 2007, exited c.2009 when the Pervenio was acquired by the New York Stock Exchange Company.

Music technology, heavy weight Spotify acquired Soundwave, known as the “watercooler” for music fans, by both tracking what you listen  to, what your friends listen to, and then using algorithms to suggest music based on that while also providing a messaging platform to  iscuss your playlists in Jan 2016 after presenting to the HBAN investors in 2014.

20/20 Insights exited following the successful completion of sale to Swisspost in late   2011 and provided a return on investment of 7 times to the original angel investor.

Belfast agricultural software company FarmWizard was bought over by the global Grosvenor Estate, in a deal which will see the local firm triple in size.

Veterinary biologic therapeutics company was acquired by the worlds leading animal health company Zoetis in 2017 for approximately $85 million.

A Galway based MedTech company exit was in the region of $40M (combination of upfront cash and future earn ) in 2015 providing an undisclosed but substantial return for the investors involved. 

Alongside an equity investment from Enterprise Ireland, Phorest raised €700,000 from 12 HBAN angel investors in two funding rounds in 2011 and 2013. In June 2018 Phorest completed a third round of investment, receiving €20 million from US investment firm Susquehanna Growth Equity (SGE). As a result, eight of the original HBAN investors were bought out, each receiving an average return amounting to 10 times their initial investment.