Limerick start-up Huggnote hits a high note at Times Square

Limerick sisters Jacqui and Perry Meskell see their start-up ‘Huggnote’ reach new heights with New Year promotional campaign in Times Square, New York.

Limerick start-up ‘Huggnote’ reaches new heights with New Year promotional campaign in Times Square, New York

Limerick start-up Huggnote has scaled new heights of success having launched its New Year promotional campaign in Times Square, New York ahead of this weekend’s celebrations which over one million people are expected to attend.

The messaging app, founded by local sisters Jacqui and Perry Meskell, uses music as a language for people to express sentiment including ‘Happy New Year’ via multi-sensory experiences called Huggs. With users in 204 countries the start-up has had a bumper couple of weeks with over 2010% increase in sign-ups to the app as festive well-wishers turned to it as a digital alternative to Christmas cards.

“We always knew that Huggnote was a global start-up and so there really is no better place to launch this campaign than Times Square ahead of the biggest New Year’s Eve party in the world,” says founder and CEO Jacqui. “But It was a real pinch-me moment seeing our creation up there on a billboard amongst giant consumer brands like Coca-Cola and Disney,” said CEO Jacqui.

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“But It was a real pinch-me moment seeing our creation up there on a billboard amongst giant consumer brands like Coca-Cola and Disney,” CEO Jacqui.

Huggnote, which previously won ‘Best Emerging Start-Up’ at the Limerick Chamber Awards, curates music by emotion so users can find the perfect song for anything they wish to express, add a message and send it via WhatsApp or Text to any number of recipients at once.

“It’s really convenient for the sender but it’s the emotional impact on the recipient that truly sets it apart,” says Perry, who says that users regularly tell them how they were brought to tears by the app.  Huggnote has also won awards for its social and sustainable impact, with every HUGG sent instead of a paper card saving 140g CO2e.

Huggnote’s Times Square presence rounds out a successful year in which it was named one of Ireland’s ‘Most Ambitious Start-Ups’ and was amongst 12 of 122 start-ups at the Hotbed UK Overrules Programme for female founders. Jacqui was also a finalist at the prestigious Image/PWC Businesswoman of the Year in the Digital/Technology category, as well as being awarded an MBA scholarship to Smurfit Business School, which she deferred. The start-up previously won awards including from Google and Mozilla and in 2020 it won the top $50k prize on US Bloomberg/Amazon TV Show ‘2 Minute Drill’.

The founders are currently completing the Hotbed Expand programme in the UK for fast-scaling start-ups raising Seed investment in the next 6 months. Previously Huggnote won both prizes of ‘Best Pitch’ and ‘Product Most Likely to Use’ at the Hotbed UK/Ireland programme.

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