Eventually, in 1991, IONA Technologies, was founded by Horn and fellow TCD academics Sean Baker and Annrai O’Toole, each of the three putting in 1,000 Irish pounds for starting capital.

IONA received limited support from Trinity College, including an office with a desk and phone in a TCD innovation centre on Westland Row.

The firm was strategically focused on object-oriented middleware software, but initially produced training, device drivers and ran backups.

[4] IONA found the Irish market (business expansion schemes, banks, venture capital firms) unwilling to invest, secured some IDA Ireland support, grew.

Despite having just 11 staff, they then sold a multi-national network management system to Motorola, and then a solution to Boeing,[4] and were able to become the first Irish company to float on the NASDAQ,[2] achieving the fifth largest debut on that exchange to date.