Web 2 Ireland

Rick and Shel have postponed their visit to Ireland. When they have re-organized the trip, we look forward to hosting them in Ireland. Unless everyone wants to meet up on September the 8th, we’re going to cancel geek dinner too.

Paul Graham has compiled a great post on How to Present to Investors

Loved this….

“Recently a VC who came to speak at Y Combinator talked about a company he just invested in. He said their business model was wrong and would probably change three times before they got it right. The founders were experienced guys who’d done startups before and who’d just succeeded in getting millions from one of the top VC firms, and even their business model was crap. (And yet he invested anyway, because he expected it to be crap at this stage.)”

Following up on our previous post on Rick and Shel’s world tour.

Shel posted a comment to the blog post on what they would like to see…

“Both Rick and I are looking for people with great ideas about Ireland and what's going to happen there for entrepreneurs in the next five years or so. The last thing we want is a powerPoint presentation. Rick may very well circle back later as an investor, but he is coming to Dublin to learn. I'm coming in the hope of hearing great stories about social media company players that will fit into my book. I am very interested in how culture shapes and changes technology.”

Enterprise Ireland are hosting a get-together of entrepreneurs, VCs, industry folks, etc. to meet up with Shel and Rick

Location: Enterprise Ireland, Glasnevin
Date: Friday 8th September
Time: 1pm to 5.30pm
Afterwards: Geek/Blog dinner – Market Bar, Fade Street – 8pm.

Please RSVP to Mary Boyle (mary.boyle AT enterprise-ireland.com), Enterprise Ireland, if you wish to attend before Friday, August 18th.

Right before BarCampIreland, you can celebrate online life as part of OneWebDay on September 22nd. According to Susan Crawford, Assistant Professor of Law at New York’s Cardozo Law School and starter of the idea, OneWebDay was created to celebrate the difference the web has made in our lives. This is a great way to spread the word about what you are doing to a wider audience.

Jim Moore, a General Partner in the RSS Investors Fund and CEO of Newsilike Media Group has posted an essay for software developers and teams of entrepreneurs entitled “The Software Patent Process can be your Friend”. It’s also available in PDF format and well worth printing out.

Looks like all the requests have been taken seriously by the Chamber of Commerce in their plea to the Government to also focus on smaller scale start-ups (and that means web companies).

Great post over at ksblog on the art of the elevator pitch. Two take aways that Irish companies could improve:

1. Keep it short: a line or two.
2. Keep it about the person you’re talking to: Provide them with an example of how you can help them.

My addition: Practice this in over and over so that it falls out of your mouth every time you meet someone.

Great information on how to track your web2.0 application.

Vitamin Features How to measure the success of your web app

David Hornik commented on our post on Entrepreneurship In Europe

“I'd love to come out to Ireland one of these days. There's lots of exciting stuff going on over there.”

David – we’d love to have you come over to Ireland.

On the same subject, Fred Destin, of Atlas Ventures has a blog post on the misconceptions @ the ecosystem in Europe.

IMHO, the ecosystem in Europe is parochical.

Case in point: How many French VCs or Angels invest in UK or Irish startups ?

PDC Accepting Applications for Hothouse 12

Good afternoon All,

Just a quick email to let you know that PDC is now accepting applications for our twelfth Hothouse programme which will begin on Thursday September 21st. If you know of anyone who the Programme might benefit I'd be grateful if you would forward this information on to them.

Hothouse is a 12-month support and incubation programme aimed at graduate entrepreneurs with a knowledge-intensive technology-based innovative idea and with plans to develop and grow a business which will trade globally. There are 16 places available.

Very briefly the supports that are provided through Hothouse are as follows:

• Incubation space here in Docklands Innovation Park, free of charge for the duration of the Programme
• A series of twelve 2-day workshops in a variety of areas ranging from strategic business planning to marketing, raising investment to intellectual property issues. The sessions are facilitated by industry experts and are practical in nature, using participant businesses as working case studies
• Student training grant of €550 per month for each of the 12 months
• Business counseling participants are allocated a mentor to work with them in a strategic capacity
• Access to the wider PDC network PDC have been delivering programmes such as Hothouse for over 15 years
• The opportunity to apply for CORD funding from Enterprise Ireland, which can be worth up to 50% of their previous year's salary up to a maximum of €38,000
• A structured evaluation process helping participants to prepare and deliver a strong business plan and the opportunity to graduate with a Post-graduate Diploma in New Business Development conferred by the Dublin Institute of Technology, subject to submission of a business plan at the end of the year that reaches a certain standard
• Access to DIT resources and expertise

Applicants are required to submit a short business proposal, approx. 8 – 12 pages, outlining their business proposition and providing information about their target market, competition, revenue model and key milestones moving forward. We also require a copy of their own CV and would be grateful if they could provide short bios of other team members, where relevant. Applications should be submitted by e-mail to me at boreilly@pdc.ie
For further information you can check out the overview. If you have any further questions please let me know.

Warm Regards

Bernadette O’Reilly

Centre Manager

PDC

Docklands Innovation Park

128-130 East Wall Road

Dublin 3

Tel: +353 1 2401300

Fax: +353 1 2401310