Irish Investment Activity – 2008 – Short Analysis
24th of April 2009 by admin
Mike Butcher has a piece on TC UK in relation to Number of European tech investment deals drops by a quarter
Based on information provided by Calibre One – Ireland is ranked well down the table
Irish Investments listed in documents provided by Calibre One
Q4
3-Oct Cúram Software 2,699,520 Enterprise Ireland
17-Oct Movidia 14,307,138 Celtic House Venture Partners, Capital-E, Emertec Gestion,
AIB Seed Capital Fund, Enterprise Ireland
30-Nov RedMere Technology 7,000,000 Enterprise Ireland
Total Invested – 24,006,658
Q3
9-Jul Corvil 12,000,000 Vesbridge Partners, ACT Ventures, APAX Partners
15-Jul MUZU TV 8,000,000 Oyster Technology Investments
8-Aug MobileAware Ltd Undisclosed Nauta Capital and Cross Atlantic Capital Partners
10-Aug EpiSensor 1,429,400 AIB Seed Capital Fund, Enterprise Equity Venture Capital Group,
Enterprise Ireland, executive chairman Gary Carroll and his family
12-Aug CommProve Undisclosed Endeavour Vision
17-Aug Chip Sensors Ltd. 1,429,400 Enterprise Ireland and the Bank of Ireland Kernel Capital Partners Fund
21-Aug Luzern Solutions 3,573,500 Delta Partners
26-Aug Boards.ie Undisclosed Daft Media
30-Aug decaWave 2,287,040 Enterprise Ireland, private investors
1-Sep EpiSensor 1,429,400 AIB Seed Capital Fund, Enterprise Ireland, Gary Carroll, Brendan O’Malley
15-Sep CommProve 14,000,000 TVM Capital and Endeavour, TLcom Capital
17-Sep Percana Group Undisclosed International Financial Data Services
18-Sep PCH International 21,155,120 Lightspeed Venture Partners, Norwest Venture Partners, Focus Ventures
Total invested 65,303,860
But I go to The Irish Venture Capital Association (IVCA) website to check their Venture Pulse we get a different set of data.
Q4 2008 – 24 Investments – € 68,611,000.00
Q3 2008 – 11 Investments – € 70,810,000.00
Q2 2008 – 24 Investments – € 60,162,000.00
Q1 2008 – 20 Investments – € 43,330,000.00
Total – 79 Investments – € 242,913,000.00
[compare to €226m in 2007]
Check
Web2Ireland has also obtained some information on early stage investing via the Seed Capital Scheme and Business Expansion Schemes.
2008 – BES/SCS Investments – €53m
2007 – BES/SCS Investments – €111m
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Summary is that Irish VC investment focus appears to be on non-internet, capital intensive industries [medical, etc] and later stage.
Given that Ireland has only 6 funds who participated in EI €175m Programme – which raised in total €275m – the 2008 Investment of €243m has no doubt forced the Irish VCs to lobby some of the €500m promised by Government.
From a Web2Ireland perspective the situation remains the same – a total lack of early stage funding in the 250k to 2m range. Related to this is an open letter from one of the main Angel investors in the internet space in the UK/Europe – Robin Klein to the UK Govt.
Despite it been April 1st – we’re serious in our attempts to get a Seed Fund in Ireland.
Tags: IVCA, tag, web2ireland
2 Responses to “Irish Investment Activity – 2008 – Short Analysis”
liam
April 24th, 2009 at 1:27 pm
The Israel of the North, we are not. The two ingredients are good entrepreneurs & local VC partners but former dependent on latter.
brendan lally
April 27th, 2009 at 10:25 pm
Sad and not just a sign of the (recent) times – these stats are ‘better’ than in the past