Claire McHugh

Who is Claire McHugh?

Claire McHugh is the CEO and co-founder of Axonista, an Irish video technology company that builds the software broadcasters use to turn passive viewing into interactive, transactional experiences. Speaking at SaaStock Europe 2017, McHugh introduced herself plainly — "My name is Claire McHugh — I'm the CEO and co-founder of Axonista, an Irish company" — before walking the audience through what the company actually does: enabling users to interact with content while they watch video, and crucially, to buy things directly from that video.

Her SaaStock talk, titled "Building a Presence in The US," framed McHugh not just as a product founder but as an operator wrestling with one of the hardest problems facing European software companies: how a small Irish business breaks into the United States and wins the large, demanding broadcast customers that live there. Rather than selling to a long tail of small accounts, Axonista sells to large broadcasters that want to enable multi-screen interactive experiences — a market where the buyers are global media institutions and the sales cycles match. McHugh's perspective is shaped by landing exactly those customers and learning what it takes to support them across geographies and time zones.

What makes McHugh's story distinctive is the category she operates in. Interactive and shoppable video sits at the intersection of media, commerce, and technology, and the companies that buy it are some of the most recognizable names in broadcasting. Her talk offers a candid look at how a founder builds credibility with that caliber of customer from a home base outside the US, and how the practical realities of an American presence — proximity to buyers, market presence, and operating footprint — factor into a SaaS company's expansion plans. This page collects Claire McHugh's recorded SaaStock talk, with the transcript, for founders studying how to take an interactive-video product into the world's largest media market.

About Axonista

Axonista is an Irish company that builds video technology, and as McHugh described it on the SaaStock stage, its product enables large broadcasters to deliver multi-screen interactive experiences. The core idea is to let viewers do more than watch: they can interact with the content in front of them, and they can buy the products that appear on screen. That shoppable-video capability is what differentiates Axonista in a media landscape where broadcasters are looking for new ways to engage audiences and generate revenue from the content they already produce.

The company's customers are not consumers but the broadcasters themselves — the kind of global media organizations that operate at scale across multiple markets. McHugh cited QVC, the global shopping channel, as a customer for whom Axonista powers all of its shoppable video. She also pointed to Sinclair Broadcast Group as another major US broadcast customer. These are anchor logos that signal Axonista plays in the enterprise tier of broadcast technology, where reliability, integration, and trust matter as much as the feature set itself.

Operating from Ireland while serving large US broadcasters is the central tension McHugh's talk explores. Selling interactive video to global shopping channels and broadcast groups means the company's growth is tied to landing and expanding within a relatively small number of high-value accounts, many of them in the United States. That reality is what pushed the question of a US presence to the front of Axonista's strategy, and it frames the practical lessons McHugh shares about bridging the distance between an Irish headquarters and an American customer base.

Key lessons from Claire McHugh's talks

Sell to the broadcasters, not just the viewers. Axonista's product enables interactive, shoppable experiences for end users, but McHugh is clear that the customer is the large broadcaster who buys and deploys the technology. Building for one audience while selling to another forces a founder to be disciplined about who the contract is with, and to design a product that serves both the viewer's experience and the broadcaster's business goals.

Anchor customers prove the category. By powering all of QVC's shoppable video and serving a major US broadcast group like Sinclair, Axonista turns marquee logos into proof that interactive video is a real, buyable product line rather than a novelty. For founders in emerging categories, McHugh's example shows the value of winning a flagship reference account that legitimizes the offering for the next buyer.

A US presence is a strategic decision, not an afterthought. The title of McHugh's talk — "Building a Presence in The US" — reflects a deliberate reckoning with what it takes for an Irish software company to win and keep large American broadcast customers. Proximity to those buyers and a credible market footprint shape how a European SaaS company plans its expansion.

Pick a defensible niche and own it. Rather than chasing a broad market, Axonista concentrates on a specific, technically demanding problem — multi-screen interactive and shoppable video for large broadcasters. That focus lets a small company punch above its weight against far larger media partners and build deep expertise that becomes hard to replicate.