The grand plan by Patrick Collison
8th of June 2009 by admin
Patrick Collison, founder of Auctomatic, which was acquired last year [and alumni from Y Combinator] has a piece in today’s Irish Times – titled “The Grand Plan”
Patrick hits the nail on the head in his observations about seed funding in Ireland
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Some extracts from article
“Ireland has an abysmal record of encouraging technology companies, especially start-ups. This is masked by our stellar ability to attract companies for financial reasons. Though we have a few truly great companies, we have mostly failed to create a start-up community worthy of the name. (Quick try to think of an Irish technology company with revenues of more than, say, €50 million.)
And we might wonder: How could we possibly create a multitude of companies on the scale of Google, Yahoo, Sun, Facebook, Twitter and Cisco?
Paul Graham, a well-known Valley investor, suggested a would-be start-up hub should give $1 million to each of 50 start-ups, just to get them to relocate. $50 million is a tiny amount of money when weighed against the benefits it would bring (it's less than a quarter of the cost of the regeneration of Croke Park). And yet, such a move would, overnight, turn Ireland into one of the biggest start-up hubs in the world.
Assuming we got start-ups to relocate, many would need funding. Silicon Valley has a huge number of angel and venture capital investors. Though Ireland could probably eventually grow something comparable given enough time, some sort of bootstrapping is likely to be required.
Two final ideas. Though full of good people, Enterprise Ireland still take several months to make most investment decisions. This is crazy it encourages good companies to get their money elsewhere.