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Sep 2019 – Apr 20202 min read

GigInside · Co-Founder

Founded GigInside, the Social Skills Cloud for internal talent flow.

An internal gig-working and skills platform for enterprises. Won Local Enterprise Office feasibility funding, completed a UK&I feasibility study, registered the company, secured Enterprise Ireland HPSU engagement, then COVID-19 closed the enterprise buying window mid-raise.

Case at a glance— 01
Problem type

Build from zero

The mandate

Take a category-defining idea from concept to investable startup: prove the problem with real enterprise buyers, validate the market, build a team and product roadmap, and unlock Enterprise Ireland's High Potential Start-Up pathway, all while…

Workstreams

1

Distinct parts of the intervention

Headline result

LEO grant

Feasibility funding awarded

Measured outcomes— 02
LEO grant
Feasibility funding awarded
EI HPSU
High Potential Start-Up engagement
$2.6B+
UK&I SOM identified
30 weeks
Modelled path to €1M ARR
The situation— 03
Context

What was happening.

Born from 20 years inside HR tech, data and workforce design: most large organisations could not see who had what skills, what skills were needed, or how to move work to people instead of people to work. It was easier to hire externally than to find the talent already inside. GigInside set out to fix that with a Discover / Connect / Measure / Manage platform.

Mandate

What had to change.

Take a category-defining idea from concept to investable startup: prove the problem with real enterprise buyers, validate the market, build a team and product roadmap, and unlock Enterprise Ireland's High Potential Start-Up pathway, all while holding a credible enterprise SaaS commercial model.

What changed

The moves that made the difference.

The intervention, broken into the moves that mattered.

01

Highlights

9 moves
  • Uncovered the idea in 2016 from inside global HR analytics work at Dell, the recurring pattern that internal talent was invisible to the systems that managed it.
  • Designed a visual prototype with DIT (2017) covering the four product pillars: Internal Gig Working Platform, Skill-Based Workforce Management, Team / Project / Task feedback, and Automated Career Pathing.
  • Won a Local Enterprise Office Feasibility Grant (Nov 2018) and ran a structured UK&I feasibility study (Feb-Jul 2019), market sizing, competitor mapping (Catalant, Bridge by Instructure, Fuel50, Degreed, Workday/Rallyteam, SAP SuccessFactors) and buyer interviews.
  • Sized the opportunity: $362B HR Tech TAM (7% YoY), $8B+ Global Talent Experience SAM (15% YoY, est. $16B by 2023), and a $2.6B+ UK&I Talent Experience SOM across 31,000 mid-market and 7,000 large enterprise targets.
  • Positioned GigInside in the visionary quadrant against incumbents, matching or beating Series D / IPO competitors on Skill-Based Workforce Management, Automated Career Pathing, Team/Project/Task feedback and Internal Gig Working in a single platform.
  • Registered the company (Aug 2019), opened the seed funding round (Oct 2019) and entered Enterprise Ireland's High Potential Start-Up engagement track.
  • Authored the 3-year GTM plan: Pre-Start Feasibility → Year 1 Credibility (beta customers, white papers, speaking) → Year 2 Growth (integrations, partnerships) → Year 3 Scale (3rd-party software licensing).
  • Built the financial model: €12 standard / €7 beta per-employee / month at 1,000 average seats, €144K and €84K ARR per customer respectively, with a 30-week path to first €1M and a Year-3 cumulative sales line of €1.7M.
  • Closed the company in 2020 when COVID-19 collapsed the enterprise HR-tech buying window mid-raise, and carried every lesson (problem framing, EI process, competitor positioning, financial modelling, founder discipline) into the work that followed.
What I would carry forward
Timing is a feature you don't control. The discipline of taking an idea through feasibility, market validation, competitor positioning and a credible financial model is the part you keep, and the part that makes every later programme sharper.
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