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Sugru co-founder Jane ní Dhulchaointigh

This Irish woman raised €5 million for her sticky rubber that can fix nearly anything

Sugru will be valued at almost €40 million after the crowdfunding effort.

MOULDABLE GLUE COMPANY Sugru has raised almost €5 million from investors five years after its products first went on sale.

The UK-based firm, co-founded by its Irish inventor, Jane ní Dhulchaointigh, pulled in £3.55 million (€5 million) on crowdfunding platform Crowdcube.

In return for the investment Sugru will hand over a 13% stake in the company, assuming all 2,700 investor bids come through, valuing it at about £27 million (€38 million) after the fundraising drive.

It raised more than three times its planned investment in the campaign and smashed equity funding records with the largest single investment of £1 million and widest international reach of 68 countries.

RED-blob

Ní Dhulchaointigh started the company about 10 years ago after experimenting with mouldable silicone while studying product design in London.

The crowdfunding campaign truly reflects most projects at Sugru: hard work, team spirit, customer interaction, loads of fun and a few record-breaking moments,” she said.

timeline-c055134d06db909fbb19d850ac57b59c A timeline of Sugru's development

Click here for a larger version

Expanding rubber

The finished Sugru product, which first went on sale in 2010, sticks permanently to materials like ceramic, glass and metal. It was named among Time magazine’s top 50 inventions the same year.

Out of the pack it can be shaped like putty, but within a day it hardens into flexible silicone rubber.

Sugru YouTube YouTube

The product is waterproof when cured and works at temperatures from well below freezing to above boiling point, and can be used as a sealant, as an adhesive or for rubberised grip.

The company, which manufactures the rubber in east London, plans to expand into more retail outlets across Europe and the US with the money raised.

It has already started selling in major retailers like Target and expects its products to be in 10,000 stores by the end of the year.

READ: The government is trying hard to lure foreign startups to Ireland >

READ: Irish and global female tech entrepreneurs you need to know about >

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    Mute Dara McGann
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    Oct 7th 2014, 2:19 PM
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    Mute ÉiRed
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    Oct 7th 2014, 2:03 PM

    Why?

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    Mute Sean Murphy
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    Oct 7th 2014, 2:06 PM

    I’d guess for games/watching movies on a larger screen with other people who have the phone, what else?

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    Mute John Turkey
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    Oct 7th 2014, 2:07 PM

    What?

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    Mute Michael
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    Oct 7th 2014, 2:17 PM

    TV?

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    Mute Cpm
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    Oct 7th 2014, 4:40 PM

    Design & development – running your dev software, browser, image editing software side-by-side, no need to alt-tab, just move your mouse to work on different software titles (assuming this technology is going to be used in a dev environment).

    I’d f*n lover this technology in my office.

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    Mute John Horan
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    Oct 7th 2014, 2:26 PM

    Seems like the real innovation needed here is to figure out a useful reason that people would actually be interested in something like this, rather than the way of implementing it. This strikes me as something that someone in Google did, just for the hell of it, which is perfectly find, but for whatever reason it clicked with the press and they decided to run with it.

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    Mute John Horan
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    Oct 7th 2014, 2:26 PM

    fine, not find

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    Mute Kpa Morris
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    Oct 7th 2014, 3:08 PM

    Don’t worry John Google will create a need for you to have one…

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    Mute Powerful Sayings
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    Oct 7th 2014, 2:22 PM

    Wobbly

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