Fiona Edwards Murphy, co-founder and CEO of ApisProtect, shares her story on channeling her technology expertise into a passion for helping beekeepers, her transition from academia into the life of a startup founder, raising ApisProtect’s first round, building a customer base looking after 20mn bees…and playing the bagpipes!
MoneyNeverSleeps is sponsored by PAT Fintech, the training partner that demystifies fintech and digital finance for financial services professionals.
ApisProtect is an Irish tech startup using unique, innovative bee monitoring technology to help beekeepers prevent losses and increase productivity in their hives. Just this week, Fiona was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe list for 2021.
HIGHLIGHTS:
On Fiona’s attraction to IoT: “I really just fell in love with using sensors in the real world to achieve meaningful things. You're taking all of these concepts that you've learned about to get those sensors out to the real world, give people information that they don't have already and get meaningful results.”
On the early days of identifying the problem to solve: “Beekeeping works almost the same way as it did back in the middle ages. Before our technology, the last big advancement in beekeeping technology was the invention of the forklift.”
On the business impact for commercial farming: “If you want to really level up your operation, if you want to dramatically increase the revenue from your farm without having to increase the size or change the crops that you're growing, you're talking about getting your crops to be more effectively pollinated.”
On Fiona’s transition from academia to startup life: “You have to be really passionate to do a PhD, and you have to be really passionate to be an entrepreneur.”
On the importance of timing for a startup: “It was a combination of a very good product, a very good opportunity, and being the right team to go after it as we had been working in the area since the very early days of bee monitoring technology being a concept. We were in the right place at the right time with the right skill set and it all just came together really well.”
On the never-stop-learning realities of a startup CEO: “I often say I learn more in any single six-month period at ApisProtect than I did in eight years at university. That's the nature of the job. You have to understand everything that's going on because at the end of the day, you're responsible for everything.”
Episode title inspired by Wings by Little Simz
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