💡An Irishman tops the Guinness table

👋 Céad míle fáilte! Last week Mark Zuckerberg brought his own keg to Cheeky Pint and did not enjoy it. This week it was an Irishman's turn, and John Collison was offering him another Guinness 20 minutes in.

Will O'Brien, co-founder of San Francisco underwater robotics company Ulysses, joined Collison and Chris Sacca for the new episode. Collison opened by asking him to explain "Ireland's most innovative company" to Sacca. He surprisingly named…Guinness

Why do I hear you shout? His reasoning: an R&D team as early as the 1890s, a brewer who published the Student's t-test under a pseudonym, and Project ACORN, short for Advanced Cans of Rich Nectar, to make a Guinness you could drink at home.

Then the robots. Ulysses started out planting seagrass, which Will says covers 2% of the seafloor but holds 20% of the ocean's carbon. Last year it won its first US Navy contract, hunting mines, and its first with an offshore wind developer. It can sell a navy an underwater vehicle for as little as $50,000. The one the US Navy buys most often costs "somewhere on the order of maybe $5 million".

Will has since redone etn's Cheeky Pint Benchmark himself, adjusted for alcohol and episode length. By his maths, two Guinness and an assumed tequila in 49 minutes put him first of 39 guests on 3.31 pints an hour, with Des Traynor second and Zuckerberg 26th. "I have been training to competitively drink Guinness for decades," he wrote.

We first wrote about Ulysses when it raised $46m with a16z on board in April, and Will and his brother Colm were number 14 in this year's Irish AI 50.

Last week we said Zuckerberg had plenty of time to acquire the taste. Will had a head start.

TL;DR:

✈️ Abroad: Mary McKenna joins Europe's angel board, Anyscor heads for Philadelphia, Lios makes Europe's mobility top 10, and Neuromod makes the US tinnitus guidelines.

🏠 At home: Centric Health goes to a US buyer, Startup Ireland launches, Peri makes TIME's list, Phorest picks the North, and Leah Fletcher is Founder of the Year.

👑 Founder Directory: Aonghus O'Donovan went from Dyson and Formula 1 to MyCelsius, the cooling bracelet TIME just named one of the best inventions of 2026.

💰 Investment tracker: Irish seed rounds price 45% below the US, MedWrite AI lines up €2m, and a Mayo start-up opens a €500,000 round.

🧠 Brain food: Headline of the Year finalists, a Waterford village against a data centre, San Francisco's AI boom, a Sligo mathematician's 180-year-old puzzle, and the long history of Guinness R&D.

Enjoy ☕

LATEST UPDATES
News from abroad ✈️

🇪🇺 Dungannon joins Europe's angel board: Mary McKenna, who co-founded Learning Pool and sold it in 2014, is the first Irish woman elected to the board of the European Business Angels Network. EBAN represents more than 15,000 investors through over 130 member organisations in more than 50 countries. "I am particularly honoured to be the first Irish woman to hold the position," she said. She has backed more than 45 tech start-ups and chairs AwakenAngels, Ireland's first women-led angel syndicate, which now has a seat at Europe's table. Read more.

🇺🇸 Skerries scores in Philadelphia: Anyscor, the live scoring app Colin Deering launched with the All-Ireland League in 2023, has centred its US push on Philadelphia, with a soccer pilot through a US governing body representing 375 clubs. By the end of that first season, 85% of AIL teams were using it. A €750,000 round is open. "The US is a major opportunity for Anyscor because the problem we are solving is universal," said Deering. American grassroots sport is a very long tail. Read more.

🇱🇺 Lios makes Europe's mobility top 10: Dublin's Lios, set up as Restored Hearing in 2009 by CEO Rhona Togher and Eimear O'Carroll, was picked from more than 430 applicants as one of the top 10 winners of the European Start-up Prize for Mobility in Luxembourg. Its SoundBounce material cuts noise and vibration in electric vehicles, aircraft and transit. Earlier this year it renewed a European Space Agency contract worth almost €2m to take the same tech into space travel. Read more.

🇺🇸 Neuromod makes the US tinnitus guidelines: The American Academy of Otolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery Foundation has published its first update to its tinnitus guidelines since 2014, and clinicians may now offer bimodal neuromodulation for persistent, bothersome tinnitus. That is the mechanism behind Lenire, the Dublin company's device that pairs sound through headphones with mild pulses to the tongue, approved by the FDA in 2023. Neuromod says tens of thousands of American patients have been treated. "This is another historic first for our company," said founder and CEO Ross O'Neill. Read more.

At home 🏠

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🗺️ FOUNDER DIRECTORY
Aonghus O'Donovan - MyCelsius

- Role: Co-founder and CTO, MyCelsius
- Base: Bristol, UK
- Focus: Wearable cooling for menopause hot flushes
- Stage: Early, on sale in Europe, US launch next year

Aonghus O'Donovan is from Offaly and studied mechanical engineering at the University of Limerick, including a year in New York designing heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems for skyscrapers. He went on to work at Dyson, then in Formula 1 and aerospace engineering.

MyCelsius, which he co-founded with CEO Maxime Kryvian, makes a bracelet that uses thermoelectric cooling to take the edge off hot flushes, developed over three years with women going through perimenopause and menopause. Last week TIME named it one of the Best Inventions of 2026. It is sold in Europe, with a US launch set for next year.

Two more Irish founders new on the map:

🇨🇭 Peter McGarry | The Earth Foundation | Geneva. His non-profit runs The Earth Prize, backing students and young entrepreneurs with ideas for environmental problems. It was set up after the 2019 school climate strikes.

🇨🇦 Amanda Kenny | Hive Retail Solutions | Vancouver. Her agency puts merchandisers in stores across Canada for natural brands, and calls itself the country's first female-founded merchandising agency in that space.

🍀 The Global Irish Founder Directory | The Irish diaspora is building the future in every corner of the world. Are you on the map? Join the Directory | Explore the Map

THE INVESTMENT TRACKER
Who's raising this week 💰

🧠 BRAIN FOOD
5 other things we are snacking on this week

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