Web 2 Ireland

Wise words from one of the team at Slide – Johnnie Manzari on how it takes time, patience, experimentation and innovation to get to the top of the pile.

An Irish entrepreneur, Sinead Mooney of Ranelgh, Dublin 6 is the proud owner of boo.com and is in the news.

Techcrunch picked up on the boo.com rebirth, as well as gigaom.

John Collins – top notch Irish tech journalist – covered this way back in February.

Boo.com was a very famous startup from the last 90′s….. read this piece from the Industry standard

2 years later and 10 – 12% market share – not bad eh!

The Firefox Ireland party was a blast, with great attendance from all walks of life; Google, Amazon, AOL, HP, IBM, iMobi, Colgate and more. Someone said that one of the radio stations turned up but I missed 'em Mozilla sent lots of goodies to give out and I decided to add an iPod to the mix to make it a little interesting prizes went down a treat

There seems to be quite a bit of interest in getting more networking events off the ground in Dublin with .mobi looking to sponsor something. I'm all ears if anyone has any ideas on what to do next.

BTW, a very good friend of mine is hosting the Firefox Party in London, so I'll be there if anyone on the list would like to hook up.

Sequoia golden rules

Paul Kedrosky’s Infectious Greed: What Sequoia Capital Looks for in Startups

I attended another one of Robert Loch's great networking events last week (and ended up in a club with Rob + 1 afterwards… ouch!). Guest speaker was Simon Murdoch, first head of Amazon UK. You can read more about the evening on TechCrunch.

Ok, I'm a little late off the block with this post, but better late than never. As usual the event attracted a lot of interesting folk and I hooked up with some innovative individuals – amongst them was Alex Tew, creator of milliondollarhomepage.com who’s got a new iron in the fire. I look forward to hearing more about that soon.

I did come across a brilliant new idea, hence the reason for my post automatic brand creation for all those widget companies (a phrase I’ve just coined to describe Web 2.0 related companies) that require a professional, yet cheap brand identity. Justin Champney, Head of Brand Innovation at McCann WorldGroup is responsible for coming up with the idea. Justin told me, it's perfect timing given all the new start-ups that need a brand identity quickly and cheaply. Personally, I think this is a fantastic idea.

Apparently, the tool won't allow the same brand to be created more than once. The tool, being built between San Francisco and India, will ask plenty of intelligent questions to get a feel for your company. It will then build the brand identity online with all the required iconography.

I introduced Justin to an investor I knew at the event so fingers crossed!

I blogged this already over at LouderVoice and I highly recommend you check out what Mike Butcher has to say about it. In a nutshell, each Monday for a month, starting on Monday 20th November, they will showcase, and publish contact details for, a web or mobile startup which has yet to secure formal funding on TechCrunch UK and Ireland. I hope there are lots of stealth-mode Irish start-ups out there who take advantage of this.

Technorati Tags: TechCrunch, TechCrunch+UK+Ireland

Israel is always used in comparisons with Ireland @ when it comes to technology, startups, business, etc.

Some impressive initiatives from Israel @ “web2.0 space”

- seed investment company – Lgilab

- Valley tour + web2con

To keep track of what is happening in Israel I recommend this blog by Ouriel OHAYON, who is also the editor of Techcrunch France

3V Transaction Services – enabling online shopping without credit/debit cards – raises €20m from Atlas and Benchmark.

“3V Vouchers are a new way to buy online that anyone can use and which allow you to shop safely and securely without needing a credit or debit card or even a bank account”.

3V was born out of the Alphyra Group

Thanks to James for the tip. Also check here for more details.

Just spotted on Ken Norton‘s blog

Joe Kraus also talks
here about the acquisition.

Jotspot is an ideal tool for any startup – especially one with people spread over the world.

One of the leading investors in early stage business, Josh Kopelman of First Round Capital has this to say

“I don’t look to fund Web 2.0 businesses – I look to fund good businesses. I don’t care if you use AJAX to develop your website any more than if you use Ajax to clean your office furniture — just show me how you will satisfy an urgent and pervasive customer need and how you will generate revenue.”