Not Just a Princess firm scoops ‘Best New Start’ award
Richard Keane and Gavin Leonard

Not Just a Princess firm scoops ‘Best New Start’ award

TALLAGHT entrepreneur Gavin Leonard won ‘Best New Start’ for his Not Just a Princess company at the Belfast regional final of the 2021 InterTradeIreland Seedcorn Investor Readiness competition.

Leonard fought off tough competition having delivered an investment pitch via video conference in front of an expert judging panel.

Seedcorn is the island’s biggest business competition for innovative new start and early stage businesses in any sector.

Winners from each of the four regions will go on to compete in the all-island final later in the month where the overall ‘Best New Start’ and ‘Best Early Stage’ companies will be announced winning €50,000 each, and ultimately the ‘Overall Winner’ will pocket €100,000 to contribute to their business growth.

Founded in 2017 by Mr Leonard, Not Just a Princess creates books around female empowerment with a focus on STEM.

The company aims to turn the books into a series of 52 x 11 minute episodes of the “Not Just a Princess” animated TV series for a pre-school audience.

Mr Leonard, creator and producer said: “Winning ‘Best New Start’ company at the Dublin Regional final is a great success for us.

“The prize money will help us produce the title sequence for our animated series.

“Throughout the competition we have learned to look at our business through the eyes of investors, Seedcorn helped us revise our business plan and we now feel more confident pitching our idea to potential investors.

“We work in the industry of storytelling, yet Seedcorn has helped us to tell our own business story in a more coherent manner.”

Since the competition’s inception in 2003, more than 3,100 companies have been through the programme and finalists have raised in excess of €276m in equity funding, emphasising Seedcorn’s position as the premier competition for high growth start-up companies on the island.

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