Alan holds a PhD in Computer Science and founded Keelvar as a spin-out company from the Cork Constraint Computing Centre (4C) at University College Cork (UCC) in Ireland. His research focused on challenges related to procurement that his parents chemicals business encountered in tendering exercises. His focus turned to Economic Mechanism Design and Computer Science and applications within e-auctions and e-commerce and then to commercialisation.

Alan is the Head of Sales and Marketing based in the London office. He previously worked for Palo Alto Software, a leading business planning SaaS company, as the Managing Director for their European division. Prior to that, Alan worked in Barclays for a number of years and is also on the board of the Irish International Business Network. He has an MBA from Oxford University and an MSc from University College, Cork, Ireland.

Kieran co-founded Comnitel in 1999 and led the company as CEO from start-up to a $30m series of fundraising with leading international VCs. From 2003–2007 Kieran performed the role of CTO for Vallent driving the company’s product and go-to-market strategy leading to the acquisition of Vallent (450 staff) by IBM in 2007. Kieran was VP and CTO for Telecoms for IBM Tivoli and is a now a Non-Exec Director for Keelvar.

JP, a Computer Engineering graduate from the University of Limerick, has extensive technology industry experience in software development, leadership and management roles. In his previous role as Senior Engineering Manager for the Core Services team in Big Fish Games; JP drove forward the roadmap and development of key web services that scaled to the needs of a large scale platform.

Grainne is a quantitative analyst in the energy sector specialising in the valuation of real options. After obtaining an Electrical & Electronic Engineering degree from University College Cork she worked in Citigroup’s Fixed Income department developing mathematical trading models. Whilst there she studied MSc in Financial Engineering in University of London where she developed a keen interest in energy markets. Following this she spent five year