Alan Phelan

Alan Phelan is a Chartered Civil Engineer who earned his Bachelor's degree in engineering from the National University of Ireland, Galway (NUI Galway) around 1990. He built roughly two decades of senior operating experience before moving into technology investing. He was Managing Director of Servigroup, a UK rail-signalling business he grew to around £25m in turnover before it was sold for over £20m in 2005. He then served as Group Operations Director of Mouchel Plc (2005–2006) and as Chairman of Creagh Concrete Products Ltd (2006–2007).

Since about 2008 he has focused on commercialising technologies out of Irish universities. In 2010 he founded the Nucleus VP Group (NVP Group), a technology investment vehicle he co-owns with Sean McKeague, through which he backs and operates early-stage companies. He is an advocate of research-driven enterprise and in 2014 was appointed to the Industry Advisory Board of Knowledge Transfer Ireland, the state office that supports commercialisation of publicly-funded research.

His two flagship holdings are operating roles as much as investments. He became CEO of SourceDogg — a Galway-based cloud procurement software company founded in 2009 — after Nucleus VP took a majority stake (an initial ~€600,000 investment in 2011, with the buyout completing in 2012), repositioning it toward enterprise clients such as L'Oréal and Bank of Ireland and expanding into the US, Africa, Australia and Singapore. He is also a founding Director of NVP Energy, a clean-technology company commercialising energy-positive wastewater-treatment technology developed with NUI Galway (a shareholder) and supported by Enterprise Ireland.

• Invests primarily at seed stage, typically taking a significant/majority stake and an active operating or board role rather than a passive minority position.
• Strong bias toward commercialising university research and spin-outs, especially technology emerging from NUI Galway and the West of Ireland ecosystem.
• Sector interests span enterprise B2B software (procurement/SaaS) and cleantech/energy — the two areas represented by SourceDogg and NVP Energy.
• Values companies that can be built cost-effectively in the West of Ireland: "Galway is a location to conduct business and to live. The cost base is low and people want to stay."
• Looks for defensible, research-backed technology with clear commercial pull — e.g. NVP Energy's process that reportedly produces roughly three times more energy than it consumes.