Web 2 Ireland

blognation Ireland Launches

13th of August 2007 by conor

blognation Ireland launches today to bring you all the latest news from the world of Web2.0 and mobile in Ireland. 2007 is the year when activity in web development has been at its most exciting here in a long time. Our aim is to raise the visibility of this local activity to a much wider global audience.

The Irish site is part of the blognation network which is building up to be the biggest tech news site on non-US Web 2.0 startups around the globe including EMEA, Asia-Pacific, Latin America and Canada.

For a country of only four million people, Ireland has always punched above its weight in many areas. In Web2.0 too, the signs are all good for many start-ups to grow businesses with international appeal.

There is an interesting juxtaposition happening right now between the high energy in building tech businesses and the low usage of those sites by average Irish consumers. The slow uptake in broadband is the main reason for this but we are finally starting to see this change as much of the country can now get access by some means. The buzz in OpenCoffees and BarCamps is now moving to the mainstream.

Ireland is quite unusual in Europe with having almost no home-grown social networking sites where people hang out. Most of the local sites are old-style discussion boards with boards.ie being the granddaddy of them all. Outside of this, global sites like Bebo and MySpace rule. The fact that we don't need own language sites can explain a lot of this. However, the recent launch of mySay hopefully signals the beginning of more truly Irish social networking sites. mySay is a web-site and phone service that lets you record updates, listen to your friends and display them in a widget on your blog.

It is well known that the recovery of the Irish economy at the start of the nineties was driven by the arrival of many multinationals. These companies didn't just provide jobs, they provided critical training to a generation of Irish graduates. At the same time as this growth, some of the older tech companies fell by the wayside. The closure of DEC in Galway was thought by many to be a catastrophe. In fact it was the trigger that was needed for a slew of very successful start-ups to get going.

We are now seeing a repeat of this as many of the current generation of multinationals move on to India or China. The recent closure of Motorola in Cork is a terrible shock in the short term but a huge opportunity in the medium term. We know of several new start-ups that have launched as a result of the closure and we hope to cover them in the coming months.

Indigenous tech startups here in the past have tended to be enterprise focused due to the corporate background of many of the founders. It is only in the past two years that we are seeing this change and consumer Web2.0 is now finally seeing a big surge. An interesting example of this is PollDaddy which started as an enterprise survey application but has seen enormous success as a simple embedded poll app for blogs and web-sites.

The single biggest blocking factor for web startups here continues to be access to capital. The State development body, Enterprise Ireland, provides a range of assistance including grants, training and mentoring. One drawback of most grants is that they are done on the basis of matching funds which can be a problem for an average employee who has a killer idea he wants to build on his own. The incubation centres around the country are a big help in filling that gap. There is also an opportunity here for the County Enterprise Boards which have traditionally supported smaller businesses to get more deeply involved in the web.

The VC scene has been very quiet for at least 18 months due to all of the funds being fully invested. However, last year, the government provided access to €175m to the VCs as leverage. The first new fund using this, the AIB Seed Capital Fund, has just launched under the management of Enterprise Equity. This fund should be of particular interest to web start-ups as its focus is earlier stage seed investment. Several other new funds including those from Delta and NCB are imminent.

We are also hearing rumblings of three new small tech funds backed by successful entrepreneurs. Are we finally seeing the creation of a Silicon Valley style ecosystem here where money/talent/academia come together and the successful always return to seed the next generation?

The challenges faced by startups here actually mean that Web2.0 has a strong fit to Ireland; low-cost and free tools and technologies which can be used by tiny teams scattered around the country to create compelling web applications. Whilst most enterprise development is centred on a few large population centres, the majority of webapps in Ireland are coming from the long tail of locations.

The Irish obsession with talking and communicating makes us one of the most valuable markets in Europe for mobile operators based on ARPU. Voice and SMS are king here with data/MMS coming in far behind due to the prohibitive rates. Despite this, we expect to see more and more consumer oriented combined Web/Mobile offerings in the coming 12 months. Zinadoo which allows you to create your own personal mobile web-sites is a perfect example of this.

To give you a flavour of some of the other activity around the country, here are a few more examples. We'll be covering lots more of them in the coming months!

Touristr
TouristR is a travel site that allows you to plan itineraries for your next holiday, book deals from local providers, post your pics/stories and add your own travel adventures. Currently in Beta.

Pixenate
Pixenate is both a highly rated online photo editor and a software package that can be licenced to integrate those features into your own web site.

UseAMap
This started as a TinyURL for maps but the guys have been adding lots of useful features. The most recent is a Facebook App for embedding your custom maps in your profile.

Segala
Taking their background in compliance testing of sites, the Segala guys are now heavily involved in the use of Semantic metadata to enable codes of conduct on web-sites. The first step is a plug-in for Firefox but eventually they aim to replace PICS.

PutPlace
PutPlace finds, organizes and publishes your digital life to the web so that you can share it with friends. It does not provide online storage, it provides the intelligence around managing all of your important data online. Currently in closed Beta.

Weddings By Adam
This is an online wedding planner. It makes it simple to set up a website to organise and record your wedding day and provide information to all your guests.

Feel free to leave a comment, send us a note or ping us about your new startup. Whether you have been around for a while, just about to launch or still in stealth mode, we'd love to hear from you.

The blognation Ireland event page will list all kind of interesting events in Web 2.0 and mobile here and you will be able to meet us there as well!

blognation Ireland Launches

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