Republic of Work hits its second birthday

Cork business innovation hub Republic of Work (ROW) has celebrated reaching its second birthday in Cork.

Republic of Work hits its second birthday

Cork business innovation hub Republic of Work (ROW) has celebrated reaching its second birthday in Cork.

During the past 12 months alone, ROW’s shared office space in its new South Mall campus has hosted businesses who between them have created more than 125 new jobs in the heart of Cork.

In the last two years, more than 350 companies have used the space for innovation workshops, accelerators, meetings and events. Over 100 of these have called the space home at some point and there is currently 43 member companies using the facilities. It is estimated that more than 5,000 people have attended events at Republic of Work since it opened its doors.

The industries represented at ROW include healthcare, beauty, food, communications, fashion, banking, insurance, fitness, technology, law, accounting, artificial intelligence, augmented reality, hardware and recruitment. The size of businesses varies from freelancers and solopreneurs to teams from some of Ireland’s largest companies.

Republic of Work chief executive, DC Cahalane, said: “Three years ago we started on the path to building something different in Cork, two years ago we opened our doors. It has been an adventure, a struggle and every day brings a new challenge but we wouldn’t change it for anything. Together our members and alumni have created over 125 jobs in the past two years. It has been great to see Cork embrace the new way of working, scaling and innovating that we’ve introduced at Republic of Work.”

ROW has hosted over 600 free public and community events since it first opened, attended by more than 5,000 people.

These include conferences on VR/Augmented Reality with speakers straight from Silicon Valley, talks focused on growing local retail businesses, software design, female entrepreneurship, and charity drives to build websites for local Cork causes.

Staff and members at ROW are spending the week hosting a wide variety of activities and free to attend events, all in aid of Pieta House. Events included Speed Networking on Tuesday, a Nespresso coffee morning for members of Cork Chamber, pilates class and a video workshop.

Seven people are employed directly at Republic of Work, with plans to further increase that number later this year. The team is led by general manager, Frank Brennan.

ROW has won ‘Best New Business in Cork’ at the Cork Business Association Awards. This year has been an exciting one at Republic of Work with the opening of the TodayFM and Newstalk new state-of-the-art radio studio.

The purpose-built facility is being used to broadcast regular programmes on both national stations, as well as being equipped to professionally record podcasts.

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