Web 2 Ireland

David Lenehan from Polldaddy fame has authored a great article on the Irish Web2.0 scene –
Top Irish Web Apps

Judging by this list of companies – plenty of Web2.0 activity in Ireland

I understand that some folks are heading over for the web2expo event in San Fran.

See here for details:Web 2.0 Expo 2007, April 15-18, 2007, San Francisco, California. Line-up looks good, and its overly expensive [the Euro/Dollar rate to the rescue]

Who’s going ? [ping a comment]

It’s great to see an idea take flight the way Saul’s OpenCoffee Club one has over here. The first round of get-togethers has happened in Dublin, Limerick and Cork with the next ones imminent. My sense is that it is tapping into a very strong need for face to face networking by the tech and start-up community in Ireland.

It’ll take time to get the investment community involved but in the meantime, there are myriad opportunities for developers and entrepreneurs at each of the locations. Having said that, Jan from Touristr still managed to find an unsuspecting potential investor in Limerick!

To stay up to date keep an eye on the following blogs:

• Eoghan for Dublin
• James, Mary and Jan for Limerick
• Argolon for Cork

The Limerick crew are up for attending the odd Cork one and I’m interested in heading up to them too. Now all we need is one in Athlone or Portlaoise that is central to everyone!

Seth Godin and VC advice

Would you agree?

The Irish government always take the opportunity to talk up the “startups” in Ireland – this is a great example – 76 New High Growth Potential Start-Ups in 2006.

“Enterprise Ireland Start Up’s to Create 1,260 Jobs and Generate Exports Worth €110m over the next 2 years. Companies to Invest Over €47m with Support from Enterprise Ireland.”

As an Irish entrepreneur, I’ve been one of those “High Growth Potential Startups” or HPSUs.

We’ve had great support from Enterprise Ireland – Thanks mainly to our Development Advisor Brian O’Malley [Brian is primary champion within EI on web2.0 - and the shift to "long tail" businesses - because he know that if Ireland, and his area, the North west/West of Ireland is to build great businesses it has to be over the internet, and the "business model" does not need 15 expensive sales people based in the US].

The one bug bear I have with EI is the rigid focus on “numbers” – how can startup businesses predict with any accuracy their numbers – and you are held to those figures for three years.

So it’s with a grain of salt that i consume figures like “1260 jobs”, “€110m in exports” – and finally €47m investment.

I’d love to know where the €47m investment is going to come from. Joe Drumgoole always comes up with great posts – and this Joe hits the nail on the head for the €47m – “175 million euros sits in escrow?”

To be honest Enterprise Ireland and the government need to look at alternate ways to build the indigenous startup scene in Ireland, and to create the next Google/Yahoo/youtube/etc.

Now onto the prescription….

Over in London, Saul Klein points to another great post – Failing Cheaper – by US investor Josh Kopelman

“Companies used to waste millions of dollars of VC money and entrepreneurs used to waste years of their lives working on a failed hypothesis. Now, the cycle is much shorter.”

Josh and Saul both reference a “funding cycle” diagram from Peter Fenton at Benchmark Capital.

Peter’s colleague at Benchmark – Barry Maloney [ex-digifone] – previously had this to say on the subject

It is very difficult to build up a semiconductor company or an enterprise software business. You need to invest $40m to $50m before you know if you have a product that works, Mr Maloney said. With web 2.0 companies you can find out after three or four million dollars whether it will work.

Now back to Joe’s idea

“carve out 50m of that fund (or 75m or 20m) and just give it away in chunks of 100k to any Irish startup who meets .. criteria”

I would take it a step further – EI uses €25m – and gets Index, Benchmark and perhaps even Google [see what they are doing in India] to build the 1st “Y Europe” – helping Irish entrepreneurs and attracting entrepreneurs from around the world to Ireland.

Do you think we would do more that “76 Startups a year” ? Do you think with advisors like Saul and others that we’d increase the chances of buiding the next Google.

Let me know what you think ?

Stateside “holiday” trip!

- u can get up to $15K
- 20+ startup junkies, guys who’ve done well/got big/go $
- meet angels, VC’s, connections
- they’ll ‘mold’ u with lots of advice
- only 10 get selected
- what prestige — be the only IRISH startup
- free PR
- runs Mid May-Aug
- application by end of month (Mar)
- weather n scenery fantastic (as long as u don’t want any rain)
- Ps Lally guy may help with accommodation

see

http://lallylogic.startitup.net/2007/03/come-to-sunny-colorado-and-get-kick.html

PS Just going thru the application process is worthwhile as it really ‘focuses’ you on what you’re all about.
Not sure what the ‘offical’ story would be to the immigration folks at Dublin/Shannon would be but sure the EI boys would help out

Lal

I don’t know how many of you noticed but trackbacks into and out of web2ireland have been broken for a long time. After much fiddling and reinstalling and with some sterling help from Monika in hosting365, they are now functional again.

So the world now knows when web2ireland is talking about them!

Since this was a clean install, I may have missed some bits from the old one. Let me know in the comments if you spot any niggles.

Sam at Vecosys links thorough to some analysis by the folks at Library House on the recently announced Red Herring 100 nominations for the fortcoming Venture Europe event.

The Irish nominations

- 3V
- Aepona
- Babelgum
- Cicero Networks
- Lagan
- Newbay
- nooked

Hopefully we will see more Irish companies nominated in 2008

Josh Kopelman of First Round Capital [one of the most active early stage investors in "web2.0" space] has an excellent article on business models

Quote:

“The truth is, scaling from $5 to $50 million is not the toughest part of a new venture – it’s getting your users to pay you anything at all. The biggest gap in any venture is that between a service that is free and one that costs a penny.”

Check out the blog postRedeye VC: The Penny Gap and subscribe …..

http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/16750240

Luigi Malone’s on Emmet Place in Cork City Centre at 10am on Fri 16th March. If you are reading web2ireland.org then you are probably the perfect person to attend! More details on the Argolon blog.