Ep 32 - Eoin Quirke - Co-founder of TRACE

In this episode of the Founders & Funding Podcast, Philip Smith speaks with Eoin, Co-founder and CEO of Trace. Eoin shares how a problem he watched his college friends struggle with, burning through AI subscription credits within hours because of inefficient prompting, turned into a company tackling the same issue at enterprise scale.

He talks about bootstrapping Trace alongside a part-time job and a degree at UCC, recruiting his co-founder by physically tracking him down in a Cork shop, and why proving the product first is the right sequence before approaching grants or investors.

They also discuss what he learned from the NDRC pre-accelerator, the value of easygoing conversation over hard selling in the Irish startup scene, and why procrastination is the biggest obstacle most aspiring founders face.