31st of August 2011 by conor
I’ve never heard a negative word said about iGAP (The Internet Growth Acceleration Programme). If you are an internet start-up and you have €3,000, it may be the best investment you could make in the future of your company.
The deadline is Friday 9th so get your skates on. Great post over on the EI blog with quotes from those who took part in the previous two.
9th of June 2011 by conor
Kernel Capital has just announced that they have invested €500k in Waterford-based FeedHenry, a spin-out from the TSSG group in Waterford Institute of Technology.
FeedHenry enables you to build cross-platform mobile applications using just HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript. Two of their really cool features are:
If you are building a web-app and you don’t have a strong story in at least Android and iPhone, stop now and figure it out before you proceed any further. In fact, maybe you should be building for mobile first?
Web developers who know their way around JS should have a look at FeedHenry. Your existing skill-set is all you need to build an app. They have a free Developer tier and you can build for up to 8 mobile platforms.
25th of March 2011 by conor
EI has announced the 10 winners of this round of the Internet & Games Competitive Start Fund. Each start-up gets €50k for 10% equity stake by EI. 120 companies applied.
The winners are:
25th of March 2011 by conor
Digital Mines, a new Irish Cloud Computing provider, has just announced a funding round of €750,000. This includes Delta Partners first investment from their Bank of Ireland start-up and Emerging Sectors equity fund. Enterprise Ireland and existing investors were also part of the round.
The company is run by Ed Byrne is who well known to everyone in the web space in Ireland. Ed was General Manager of Hosting 365, which was sold last year to SunGard AS.
The whole idea behind Digital Mines is to take the power and usefulness of cloud services such as Amazon AWS and make them accessible to business users. Currently most cloud offerings required far too much technical knowledge. Digital Mines takes all of that and turns it into a set of one-click operations.
The Delta investment is not just important for Digital Mines, it is also sends a strong message that the Seed Funds in Ireland are out there investing in new and exciting companies despite all the doom and gloom. You can expect to see many more announcements from Shay and the team in Delta in the coming months.
11th of July 2010 by conor
The new fund is focused on software and biotech. Like many incubation-style setups, the amounts involved are €50k with 3-months of Genesis/Hothouse style support and training. Hopefully there will also be a Y Combinator approach to rolodexes and introductions.
The first round of investment will open for applicants in October this year, with the first four successful entrepreneurs being announced before the end of the year.
All the details over on their blog. Thanks to Gordon McConnell Deputy-CEO of the Ryan Academy for letting us know.
10th of December 2009 by conor
Nathalie Kosciusko Morizet, Minister of State to the Prime Minister, with responsibility for Forward Planning, Assessment of Public Policies and Development of the Digital Economy, speaking at Le Web with Loic Le Meur in Paris today.
€2B for broadband upgrades in France out of a €4B budget to invest in the digital future.
We reduce the price of booze and come up with meaningless buzzwords like Smart Economy.
29th of September 2009 by conor
I was really pleased to just get a mail from West Cork Enterprise Board about the Tánaiste’s announcement of changes in the way that CEBs can help small businesses. This could really transform the way that grants are handled around the country and finally puts an end to the silliness of people trying to capitalise the un-capitalisable in order to get CEB support.
The Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Ms. Mary Coughlan, T.D., has today announced new initiatives aimed at supporting the development of new businesses and fostering an entrepreneurial culture in Ireland. New financial supports, consisting of a Priming Grant, a Business Expansion Grant and a Feasibility/Innovation Grant will replace the existing Capital, Employment and Feasibility Grants being operated by the County & City Enterprise Boards (CEBs).
The Tánaiste announced that she has approved a significant broadening of the financial supports that the CEBs can offer their client businesses. The effect of the move is to broaden the scope of the start up and development costs that can be assisted. As a result of these changes, supports will now be available for all legitimate business costs directly attributable to starting a new business, or growing and developing a business, rather than being restricted to asset acquisition.
15th of September 2009 by conor
It’s that time of year again where start-ups all over the island are busy tweaking their business plans for the Seedcorn competition. There is still enough time if you start now and you’re missing out on a big opportunity if you don’t. There is €360,000 in prizes up for grabs.
Do you meet the following criteria?
Deadline is 1PM FRIDAY 25TH SEPTEMBER 2009
11th of July 2009 by conor
We’re a little slow with the news but it’s still worth mentioning and giving some extra background. Robin Blandford of D4H won the €10k IQPrize last Wednesday and Plink won the audience award of €1k for their elevator pitch.
As one of the judges I can honestly say it was both a privilege and a joy to listen to all 8 pitches on Wednesday. Making the final decision was very very difficult due to the quality of all of them.
If you are an investor, I recommend you study each of the 8 very closely. It is our belief that several of them will have massive exits in the next 1-2 years. All of the others will have very successful businesses and I look forward to being a customer.
The most important aspect of the IQPrize which seems to be impossible to get across to those in power was that it was entirely bottom-up with no cherry-picking or high-potential-labelling or expert-selection or jobs-for-the-boys or who-you-know or what-you-have-done-in-the-past.
Anyone could enter. Anyone.
And because of that we saw the depth of the entrepreneurial spirit in Ireland and the eagerness and hunger to build great businesses as the Zombieconomy collapses around us.
The other critical thing we saw was that many of the applicants had amazing ideas or technology but didn’t have the business background needed to make it a huge success. Incubation programmes like Genesis and Hothouse are critical here but perhaps many of those who benefited from the the boom of the past few years might like to give something back? They could offer to do more than mentoring and actually come on board with some of these businesses and help them go global. CEOs and VPs of Sales in particular could help enormously.
In 249 biz plans there were maybe 5 lunatics. I hope at least one of those proves to be a visionary and we just didn’t see it.
If you didn’t make the final 8 this year, tighten up your biz plan and have another go when the next event like this appears. There will be some feedback later in the summer from the judges overall on what worked for us and what didn’t in terms of biz plan. It was interesting that despite our wildly diverse backgrounds, we usually agreed on those points. Hopefully that will help everyone who applied to build a newer better kick-ass plan.
Well done to D4H, well done to Plink and well done everyone who applied.
7th of July 2009 by conor
The IQPrize pitching and judging will run from 9am-5pm tomorrow. Good luck to all the finalists.
The winner will be announced at a party afterwards which is on from 7pm-9pm in the Source Bar, Level 5, Guinness Storehouse. Each of the finalists will give their elevator pitches before the winner is giving the giant cheque. All attendees can also vote in the People's Choice award where one of the shortlist can win an extra €1,000.
If you’re interested in coming and seeing who wins the €10k prize please RSVP to coryann.joseph@iqcontent.com.
