We’re not sure whether he’s a glutton for punishment, or a step ahead of us, but Ireland’s leading social entrepreneur, Niall Harbison, is at it again. Just weeks after leaving his stellar start-up, Simply Zesty Harbison, has already jumped into another venture. And this time he’s planning to disrupt the PR industry.
Harbison has joined with former international model Emma-Jane Power to develop her start-up, PR Slides, into an international hub for brands and the media (@pr_slides). The site lets brands upload their digital PR material in one place, where it can be made available to the media. According to Emma-Jane and Niall, the site replaces the confusing number of ways competing PR agencies provide material to journalists.
And it’s this confusion that Emma-Jane knows too well. The company was founded out a frustration she had, as both a model and journalist,
“Every brand needs media exposure but accessing high resolution images and company information was quite laborious for journalists. An online media hub for Irish brands was the obvious answer”
According to Niall, with just a week’s rest from Zesty, he’s ready for a new venture.
“I said a couple of weeks ago that I’d take a week off after leaving Simply Zesty and I did that but now I’m back and raring to go on a new business. I’ve been working with PR Slides for a week now and have joined the team full time.
PR slides
Just over a year after it was founded, the company has developed an international client base that includes brands like Harvey Nichols, Littlewoods, Sony, Philips, Butlers Chocolates and Harvey Norman.
Niall says it’s this international potential that attracted him as an investor, “I actually invested in the company a while back but the opportunity is so big that I wanted to jump in with the brilliant founder Emma Power and help ramp the business up. As soon as Emma pitched the idea, I saw the global potential and the possibility of building a large tech company here in Ireland.”
The company currently has five employees, and is expecting to expand rapidly in the near future.
