RYE Connect Investor Network Expands

RYE Connect is delighted to welcome Stuart Harvey, Northern Ireland Angel investor, to the RYE Connect Investor Network.

Stuart Harvey co-founded Harco Technology, a company that provides market data usage reporting and compliance software to financial services firms, in 1997 and led the company’s expansion in Belfast, London and New York. In 2007, Harco was acquired by US-based Wombat Financial Software, and both companies were later acquired by New York Stock Exchange resulting in the creation of several hundred high tech jobs in Belfast.

Stuart is currently the CEO of Northern Ireland based data quality software company Datactics and was the Northern Ireland “Business Angel of the Year” in 2015. Stuart is an investor in several Northern Ireland based start-ups such as Axial 3D (medical 3D printing) and Shnuggle (a Newtownards based innovative baby products company selling in 20+ countries). He was the lead private investor in a Queens University, Belfast medical school spin-out for digital pathology that was acquired by Phillips of Holland in 2016 and which employs 50+ medical scientists in a global research centre in Titanic Quarter, Belfast. His most recent investment is in a one-person drone company that uses drones to survey buildings for architects and builders as an alternative to scaffolding or cherry pickers.

Stuart is an Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR) on the Catalyst Connect personalised accelerator programme called Springboard. Springboard provides tough love and mentoring to potential high-growth start-ups in Northern Ireland.

Without business angels like Stuart, many of our young RYE Connect companies would not be able to grow. The time, effort and enthusiasm all our investors offer our most exciting companies across the Northern Periphery and Arctic region is invaluable to their success and the success of the RYE Connect programme as a whole.