Our Fireside Chat guest for September has been a founder of four start ups. John Whelan rode the internet bubble in 1999 and 2000. Then settled down with the third which was most successful being Alatto technologies . Alatto traded for 9 years with sales averaging over €1m per year . More recently consultant to Vodafone Ireland for one year and then in 2008 became Technology Transfer Case Manager at Trinity College, responsible for commercialisation of IT/web research. John now runs Trinity College's startup accelerator LaunchBox as well as being Executive Director of Blackstone LaunchPad at TCD.

John also lectures at the University of Limerick UL and his motto is "Done is better than perfect"

Besides start-ups his other passions are Limerick Hurling, Munster Rugby and Flying Fifteen Sailing.