By Business & Finance 
Pictured are Emer O’Daly, Love & Robots; Tony Corrigan,Tender Scout; Eimear O’Carroll, Restored Hearing, the finalists for the ESB Spark of Genius Award at the 2014 Web Summit.
Today at the Web Summit, Love & Robots was announced as the winner of the ESB Spark of Genius Award.
A shortlist of 30 finalists was announced on September 3rd. All finalists then pitched for a panel of judges, with entrants being scored on the uniqueness of their idea, their level of development thus far, and their potential for future growth. Love & Robots won the much sought after award for their start up, a 3D printing company which personalises, tweaks and edits products to customers’ liking.
The final judging panel included Marguerite Sayers, incoming managing director of ESB Networks; Don O’Neill, VP of Engineering, Operations & Infrastructure at TripAdvisor; Aditya Argawal, VP of Engineering at Dropbox; Grainne Barron, founder of Viddyad; Bill Archer, managing director, eircom Business Solutions; and Eamonn Russell, partner at KPMG.
The winners will receive 25,000 euro in cash for the business and a range of services to assist them in the start-up phase.
Emer O’Daly, CEO and co-founder of Love & Robots commented: “We are delighted to have won the 2014 ESB Spark of Genius Award. To compete against so many other amazing companies and to be selected as the winner is an amazing feeling. We’ve met some wonderful people during this competition and wish them all the best.”
Speaking on behalf of the judging panel, Don O’Neill, VP of Engineering, Operations & Infrastructure at TripAdvisor commented: “Web Summit is a great celebration of the tech industry and I am delighted to be part of the ESB Spark of Genius Award, a competition that seeks out and champions the very best of Irish tech.”
