Web 2 Ireland

After the resounding success of the first Facebook Garage here, it’s about time we had another.

The theme this time is “Hands on with Apps, Connect and Pages”

It’s a super line-up of speakers:

• GigMonkey Facebook Application – Developer Story. Sean O’Sullivan – Rococo
• Facebook – Opportunities for businesses. Facebook 101 @ Pages, Advertising, Apps.Colm Long, Facebook EMEA
• Build Facebook Connect enabled applications with Google Apps Engine”. Robert Mao
• Facebook Connect – the experience. Muzu.tv
• Growing pains: get prepared when your facebook app go rocket high. Sharing the real story of MyCity. Flavien Clarlon

The event is on in The Digital Exchange, Crane Street, Dublin (other side of High Street from Hub) from 4pm-6pm, Thursday 2nd July.

Whilst it is a free event, you must register over on Eventbrite.

The Mobile Industry Review has a review on Locle

“I'm particularly impressed that roughly 70% of available European mobile handsets are capable of using Locle at the moment. Since it doesn't strictly rely on GPS falling back to Cell-ID for most handsets it means that, theoretically, if you were wanting to deploy a location based social networking service in, say, India (for example), the first thing you should do is call up Pieter at Locle and do a deal with them.”

Great Video from Robert Scoble with Fred Wilson at Union Square Ventures on his new Building43 startup

Ties in with Ron Conway, godfather of Angel investing in the valley – and his new “investment theme” – persistent/real time data. As per Techcrunch piece “has a goal to invest in 40-50 companies in the next 18 months. His focus will be companies exploiting real-time data, which he calls the next billion dollar market opportunity. Conway is already an investor in Twitter and Facebook, two companies solidly in the real-time space.”

Check out this video with Ron on AllThingsD

Evert Bopp, has launched “The Greenhouse” – a startup incubator based in Limerick.

The story so far:

1) Secured 2300 sq.ft. office premises at prime location on O'Connell street in Limerick (free of charge for 1 year)

2) Secured high speed broadband connections and 2 phone-lines free of charge (Eircom)

3) Built up a substantial panel of advisors & mentors that will assist the start-ups in their development.

4) Received significant coverage in national & regional media

5) Opened discussions with Dell regarding financial & material support

6) Entered into discussions with University of Limerick regarding possible cooperation

Evert is also running events – next one is on Blogging & Social Media for biz

This is the sort of news I love reporting. We now have an App School in Ireland. Over the course of 5 days you can learn how to build iPhone Apps. Run by SQT Training, Patrick Collison and Damien Mulley, this will give you all the skills you get to get your App built and launched. At only €1500 for the week, that’s a bargain considering how much traditional programming training courses cost. The first course is on in the Castleknock Hotel Dublin from July 20-24.

One of the best courses I ever did was back in 2006 when Ryan Carson presented his one day workshop, “A-Z: How to Build a Web App”. Because it wasn’t just about tech but also about all the pitfalls in trying to launch an App, it enabled us to avoid many common mistakes. My sense is that App School could do the same.

As I said on Twitter earlier, I believe that iPhone & Android development could be to techie teenagers what the ZX Spectrum, C64 and BBC Micro were to my generation. I am what I am today because I got a Speccy when I was 14. I taught myself Basic, Forth and Z80 assembler. I even had games published in magazines. Imagine being 15 years old and having people download your App from the iPhone App Store or Android Market. The buzz!

I want to see the next generation of people coming out of technical course in third level education with at least one mobile app and one webapp in their portfolio. The days when Java skills got you a job in a bank are over.

Well done everyone involved in getting App School launched. Looking forward to seeing what the Alumni develop.

The Press Release on the IQPrize has just gone out and the important bits are as follows.

• Decisions For Heroes (Robin Blandford) A web application that saves lives by helping rescue teams record and analyze their rescue operations and training
• GetitKeepit.com (Alan Coleman) A web application to help consumers declutter their lives by offering an online portal for the management and retention of important documentation
• MyHotel.ie (David and Matt Sherlock) A website and booking engine that reinvents the traditional booking model, offering hotels a powerful new marketing channel with no booking fees
• Neurosynergy Games (David Delany, Lorraine Boran and Michael Boran) Innovative online brain training application designed to enhance both intellectual (‘IQ’) and emotional (‘EQ’) performance for healthy people and people with specific mental disorders
• Octopied (David Behan, Ronan Morris and Michael Flanagan) A web application for freelancers, helping them manage invoicing, project management, sales and support through one simple and cost-effective tool
• Our Writers' Bloc (Owen Gallagher and Karl Quinn) An online marketplace that connects self-published authors directly with their readers, and facilitates the distribution of material over multiple formats including mobile phones and e-Reader devices
• Pendle House (Michael Furey) An online currency exchange marketplace that allows companies and individuals around the world to trade currencies directly with each other, cutting out all transaction costs
• Plink (Mark Cummins, James Philbin) An image-driven search engine that allows users take a photo of an object with a mobile phone, and automatically retrieve information about it online

On July 8th, the final candidates will make a Dragon's Den type presentation to the judges, followed by a public event where the candidates will be able to make a short elevator pitch to the audience. The People's Choice Award of €1000 and the Grand Prize of €10,000 for the overall winner will be announced at the end of the night.

To add my 2 cents as a judge, I was honestly blown away by the quality of all the biz plans I reviewed. I expected that there’d be lots of badly thought-out, lunatic fringe stuff but I was completely wrong. 90% of what I read could make a feasible business.

Selecting the final 8 was bloody difficult because there were so many great ones submitted. I fully expect to see a ton of those who submitted plans running highly successful businesses over the next few years. I hope they all go straight to their County Enterprise Board or Enterprise Ireland and give them the same plans they sent us.

I don’t know who will win the prize but those 8 businesses could easily generate €100m+ revenues between them.

Here’s hoping IQContent are getting non-stop calls from EI and the CEBs to get access to all the other fantastic plans.

Video from Damian Bannon of the Announcement:

More coverage from Villa81:

The shortlist of companies for the IQPrize was announced earlier this evening. They are as follows:

• Decisions for Heroes
• getitkeepit.com
• myhotel.ie
• Octopied
• Our Writers Bloc
• Plink
• Neurosynergy games
• Pendle House

More details tomorrow along with some thoughts on the high quality of the entrants.

One of the founders of IONA, Chris Horn and a leading light in the Irish technology sector has an excellent post on his blog – titled “Boxing above your weight”

Some extracts

I strongly advise that you should consider having a close business partner with whom you can share your concerns and excitement, and who will share theirs with you. Between you both, or all, balance will be established and the company kept on an even keel. But equally, I strongly advise not to mix your business partners and social partners: the stress of building a business should not destroy your social life, and you have to somehow keep a balance. Your business is a long term challenge, and if you cannot manage your emotional commitments for the long term, your social life will become damaged.

So, funding was not going to happen fast, if at all. Thus, based on our own initial personal investments of 1,000pounds each, we started our company. Our initial focus was consulting and contract work, doing anything profitable and manageable. We pushed the profits back into building our first innovative product, which we eventually launched over two years later in San Francisco, having grown by then to just under a dozen people based in Westland Row in central Dublin. We never had angel capital, nor venture capital.

A paradox resulting from the small and open Irish economy is that Irish technology driven start-ups have to think globally first, not later; paradoxically this is an advantage, rather than weakness, since your offering must be sufficiently competitive “when war is declared”. If it is not, you will quickly find out so and not waste further time, energy and investment, but instead revise your approach.

As I implied at the outset, the most fundamental challenge you face in building your company is finding and retaining the right people. Your business partners and your staff are the foundation for punching way above your weight, and executing the strategy which you devise.

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You can also follow Chris on twitter

It’s not just Dolphin-friendly, it’s the perfect app for a specific problem. FineTuna lets you upload pics, annotate them with comments etc and then forward on to someone.

I’ve attempted to do similar using paint packages like Paint.net but all their features just get in the way.

FineTuna is ideal when you are either going through design revisions for a site or trying to highlight bugs or things you don’t like on a live site.

The lack of any requirement to sign-up is another bonus and the Firefox Extension makes it a no-brainer to use.

This isn’t just a tool for desingers and web-devs and their customers, it is also a superb customer-support tool. I know I’ll be using it a lot from now on.

If you like FineTuna, why not do your own (Wednesday) Push of it?

Following on from our piece on Patrick Collison’s IrishTimes piece, we had some great activity in the comments

Joe Drumgoole outlines his “Grand Plan” in the comments and its very worthwhile to get them published here.

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I've answered my own questions below.

1. A dire lack of capital at every level

For startups entry to a incubator with a business plan focused on exports and employment automatically entitles you to a CORD grant, no questions asked.

Once you leave the incubator you get a 50k grant straight away which is focused on completion a delivery of the first production version of your software. No production version, no more money.

Once you have a production version you start into the matching money game. But instead of 50/50 its 2/3 EI cash, 1/3 matching. This grant is capped at 250k from EI. You can raise more from externals but EI will still cap its contribution.

Force VCs that have capital from EI to focus on the year 1-3 startups. Use a reduced carry model to get this kind of deal over the line with the VCs.

Get UK VCs over here en mass to show cases of Irish companies. Never saw a UK VC yet at an EI event here in Dublin.

This should be enough to get all but the most capital intensive enterprises off the ground.

2. A tiny indigenous market which means you have to run (export) before you can walk (sell locally)

EI has a raft of export focused training programs but the dissemination of the the information is abysmal. They need a better website a more structured training plan and a better mentoring network. They are also focused on person to person selling whereas what Irish web companies need is a crash course in global online selling including email campaign management, web analytics, user experience, usability etc. etc.

3. A shrinking skillbase (this is the first year we have seen intake in the sciences rise)

Lots of people working on this, and science graduates are up for the first time . Finally people don't want to be solicitors or lawyers anymore – hurray!!. We need computer programming and abstract problem solving into the primary and secondary curriculum. DeBono covers these requirements well in his writing. See Teaching your Child to Think.

4. Uncompetitive costs at every level

Recession is fixing this, but we need to stamp out percentage of pricing in the professional sector (that’s you solicitors).

5. A failure to invest in grass roots startups

Web 2.0 Seed Fund would help here. Better social network integration between the incubators. Proper metrics for success and failure that cover a 10 year period.

Refocusing EI efforts on year 1 to 3 rather than year 3-10.

Teaching startups to focus on customer growth rather than capital growth.