💡MuskLingus

👋 Céad míle fáilte! In January, Michael O'Leary turned a public row with Elon Musk over Starlink into Ryanair's "big idiot seat sale". This week, Aer Lingus showed what saying yes looks like.

The airline has now fitted Starlink to every long-haul jet it flies, all 12 Airbus A330s and all 14 A321s, according to One Mile at a Time. The wifi is free, in every cabin. When the first plane flew Dublin to New York in March, Aer Lingus said the long-haul fleet would be done by early 2027. It got there before the end of October. Short-haul is next.

Musk noticed. "A cunning move by Aer Lingus 😉," he posted. We will leave that one with you.

Adrian Weckler was kinder to the old system than most. It had wifi "when most European airlines had none", he wrote, even if it was "fairly woeful, often non-existent (even when you've paid for it)".

The transatlantic flight just became part of the working day. We covered round one of Musk v O'Leary in January. Round two goes to the airline that said yes.

TL;DR:

✈️ Abroad: Aaron Devitt's MARC raises $5m in New York, Nuada wins €14.6m for a plant in France, John Collison joins Microsoft's board, and Sequence sells to Intuit.

🏠 At home: Whatnot doubles in Dublin, Bechtle buys ITQuotes, IPC Mouldings adds 16 jobs in Carrickfergus, and the Technology Ireland awards shortlist is out.

👑 Founder Directory: Niamh Costello went from rock stars and a Beijing Olympic bid to running Nerc Concierge on the Riviera.

💰 Investment tracker: Swaay raises more than €2m, Diotima spins out with €500,000, Go Eve lands £750,000, and EstateMin raises €1m.

🧠 Brain food: fewer cookie banners, Stripe lets agents do the banking, Ireland and sovereign AI, Wayflyer's lawsuit, and Ed O'Riordan's week.

Enjoy ☕

LATEST UPDATES
News from abroad ✈️

🇺🇸 Profitable at 24, now in New York: Aaron Devitt's MARC has raised a $5m seed round, oversubscribed and led by Work-Bench and MXV Capital, with Des Traynor, Ian Nolan and Braze's Mark Ghermezian among the angels. The TU Dublin graduate built it as a property management app with more than 40,000 monthly logins in Ireland and the UK. It now checks vendor invoices against contracts for US real estate owners with about $90bn in assets, and was profitable before the raise. We covered his $1m pre-seed in February. Read more.

🇫🇷 Belfast captures carbon in France: Nuada has won €14.6m from the EU Innovation Fund for SCALA, its first commercial-scale project, at Idex's biomass plant in Hauts-de-France. It will capture 10,000 tonnes of liquid CO2 a year with a fully electric, solvent-free process. SCALA was one of 77 projects picked from 358 applications. Nuada began as MOF Technologies, a Queen's University Belfast spin-out, and has more than 40 people in Newtownabbey. Carbon capture lives or dies on cost, and lower energy use is the whole pitch. Read more.

🇺🇸 Collison gets a seat at Satya's table: Stripe co-founder John Collison, 36, has been nominated to Microsoft's board, for one of two seats opening at its 8 December annual meeting as Reid Hoffman and Hugh Johnston step off. Businesses on Stripe processed $1.9 trillion in payments last year, and Stripe already powers Microsoft's Copilot Checkout. Last November Collison asked Satya Nadella on Cheeky Pint for advice on building a platform business. Now he gets to watch it up close. Read more.

🇬🇧 Sequence sells to Intuit: Intuit is buying Sequence, the London and New York revenue automation start-up co-founded by Riya Grover, Onfido co-founder Eamon Jubbawy and Enda Cahill. Intuit announced the deal on 15 October without a price, and Business Post has since put it at about $200m. Sequence had raised around $40m, with a16z among its backers, and counts Legora and Cognition as customers. We covered its $20m Series A in January. Read more.

At home 🏠

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🗺️ FOUNDER DIRECTORY
Niamh Costello - Nerc Concierge

- Role: Founder, Nerc Concierge
- Base: Cannes, France
- Focus: Events, property and lifestyle management
- Stage: Established, founded 2006

Niamh Costello studied at University College Dublin and built a career managing the lifestyles of rock stars, Hollywood actors and high-net-worth clients across Asia and Europe. Her events work in China took in the IRB's first Beijing Rugby Sevens and the 2008 Beijing Olympic bid.

She has spent more than a decade in the French property market. Nerc Concierge, which she founded in 2006, runs events, property and lifestyle management for private and corporate clients, and works with international clients at MIPIM and the Cannes Film Festival.

Two more Irish founders new on the map:

🇳🇿 Sean Towson | Zippily | Auckland. His agency sets up HubSpot and go-to-market tools for New Zealand and Australian B2B teams, from CRM builds to RevOps retainers.

🇵🇭 Jamie McArdle | Siguro | Cebu. His studio does design, development, video and AI automation for SaaS marketing and sales teams.

🍀 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 raised this week 💰

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

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