White Spire

WestBIC is an Enterprise Ireland partner providing hands-on startup support, funding readiness and investment preparation for early-stage founders in the west of Ireland.

White Spire is based at Platform 94, Galway, and started trading in March 2024. We build ARC, a governed data platform that turns unstructured business documents such as invoices, utility bills and financial reports into audit ready ESG and carbon data, sold as B2B SaaS. We started out doing hands on sustainability advisory and CSRD data mapping for clients, and built ARC to solve the data extraction problem we kept hitting on those engagements.

Key supports and WestBIC's role

WestBIC supported us through mentoring and business plan development and review from an early stage, and Mary Ryan worked closely with us on our successful PSSF application. Alongside that, we secured EI HPSU Feasibility funding in 2025 and Ciara completed New Frontiers Phase 1- Phase 3 in 2024.

Plans for the future

ARC is currently deployed across 21 countries with our clients and we are exploring new channels and use cases. We have expanded our research to look at new market industries and 2026 and 2027 will focus on building towards establishing ourselves there.  

Words of advice and key issues for new start-ups

Validate with paying clients before you build. Every meaningful design decision we made came from a client conversation or a frustration we encountered as we worked with a client. And don't be put off by a knock back, our first PSSF application was unsuccessful, we used that year to strengthen the case and get more paying clients. It translated in a repositioned and much more useful product in the end. We were also able to use the HPSU feasibility grant to help test the market and that was invaluable.