A START-up co-founded by a college ‘drop-out’ from West Cork has been accepted into a Silicon Valley accelerator that’s behind well-known companies including Stripe, Airbnb and Reddit.

‘Blueprints’, was set up by former Clonakilty Community College student Bence Redmond (20), and Ryan Morrissey from Limerick. The fintech platform is designed to allow anyone to easily create automated investing strategies using Artificial Intelligence.

‘It’s an AI trading platform for prediction markets, where users are able to express a plain English conviction about the world and turn it into a sophisticated, automated trading strategy using AI,’ said Bence who lived in Courtmacsherry before moving to Woodfield, Clonakilty, close to Michael Collins birthplace.

In an exciting development, the company has been accepted into Y Combinator’s Summer programme in San Francisco.

It has also been accepted into NDRC, Ireland’s national start up accelerator, and has processed more than $1 million in trading volume from over 600 users since entering public beta.

The idea took shape during Ryan’s internship at Stripe in San Francisco, where a conversation about global financial infrastructure sparked an interest in prediction markets as a legitimate, underutilised asset class.

‘Back in Ireland he brought me on board and we built Blueprints while enrolled at the University of Limerick. We registered the company in January 2025 before leaving the programme to pursue it full-time,’ said Bence.

He had been studying Immersive Software Engineering, a course started by the Collison brothers, who are behind Stripe, and Bence dropped out halfway through second year.

He feels that prediction markets ‘will shortly become a major financial asset, achieving a scale similar to that of stocks or options.’

‘Artificial Intelligence is helping to power this revolution, and we’re looking to be at the forefront of it,’ said Bence who was a student at Clon Community College from TY to sixth year.

The founders will spend the next three months in San Francisco on the Y Combinator programme before presenting to an audience of specially selected investors in September.

The pair have previously made headlines for similar ground breaking work on a business they set up called CarbonCopy.