Web 2 Ireland

Congratulations to Irish startup Plink who were recently acquired by Google.

We’ve covered Plink in the past, and well done to the founder team of Mark Cummins and James Philbin, who are both Phd Candidates at Oxford University.

Despite some other media coverage, Plink is very much Irish (registered company in Ireland), and is a past finalist in IQPrize. Colin Farrell has suffered from same confusion as Plink

Hopefully its the first of many acquisitions by Google in Ireland/Europe.

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.

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.

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.

We’ve mentioned before the iQPrize – created by Dublin internet consultancy iQ Content.

Today they announced the panel of judges for its internet start-up competition, the iQ Prize. Global heavyweights Google, Microsoft and Facebook are all represented on the judging panel, alongside local internet heroes Daft, Statcounter and Loudervoice.

With 6 days to go to the deadline, 63 entries have already been submitted.

The judges are:

* Aodhan Cullen, founder & CEO, StatCounter

* Colm Long, Head of Online Operations (EMEA), Facebook

* Conor O'Neill, co-founder & CEO, LouderVoice

* Eamonn Fallon, co-founder & CEO, Daft.ie

* Gail Power, Senior Manager, Google

* Martha Rotter, Internet Evangelist, Microsoft

iQ Content Managing Director Morgan McKeagney will also sit on the panel, but in a non-executive capacity.

The iQ Prize is an open competition for the best business plan for an internet start-up, with a no-strings-attached grand prize of 10,000 euro. Potential applicants still have until May 12th (6 days and counting!) to send in a brief 5-page business plan to show that they have what it takes to turn their idea into a great online business.

Shortlisted applicants will then be asked to present their business plans in person to the judging panel. The winner will be announced at an event in Dublin in early July.

APPLY NOW

The site goes live at 2pm today. It’s very simple, send IQContent a 5-page business plan that shows how your will turn your idea into a great online business.

The best submissions will be shortlisted and asked to present their business plans before a panel of independent judges.

The final winner will be announced at the end of June.

This bit is important:

We're not investors. We're not venture capitalists. We're not looking for equity and we don't want any intellectual property. There's no catch. There are no strings. Seriously.

All details on iqprize.ie. What are you waiting for, get your ass over there!

IQContent announced the iQ Prize at FOWADublin.