Polaris Ventures are probably best known as an investor in Automattic (who are behind WordPress, and also the company which acquired Polldaddy).
Polaris Ventures are also behind the Dogpatch Labs initiative. Its goal is connect entrepreneurs and help founders conceive and launch startups. Check out this video from Robert Scoble
Sligo is home to many up-and-coming tech startups along with the awesome PollDaddy.
If you are interested in becoming part of that cluster then you should attend the free Information Evening being held at the Business Innovation Centre in IT Sligo. It’s on Monday 21st September 2009 from 6.30 p.m. 8.30 p.m. and will hopefully answer some of the questions you might have about forming a tech startup.
Contact mary.boyle AT enterprise-ireland DOT com or + 353 (0) 71 9159700 if you wish to attend.
OK, they aren’t really but Sligo is actually their first commercial office outside of the US. The coverage of the PollDaddy acquisition has been amazing in a few short hours. Here’s just a sample:
Polldaddy is the default online poll service for leading blogs, social networks and websites – and the acquisition by WordPress parent – Automattic – makes total sense – and the team dynamics is brilliant.
Only 2 developers [Lenny and Eoin] on polldaddy – which was initially incubated within Infacta.
It was spun out as a seperate entity late in 2007 – with angel investment provided by Infacta and Polldaddy founder, Jonathan Hill.
Polldaddy also recruited Scott Rafer as an advisor in 2007 – and Scott played no small part in assisting the project in getting to its current scale.
The Polldaddy is great validation for Web2Ireland – especially given the level of investment, the operations, and the acquisition result.
Given the recent news on Facebook setting up in Ireland – it perhaps set a new model for the IDA/EI – International operations get setup via acquisition [which is what Israel have done for years].
Firefox Party – Dublin – June 19th. All over the world, Mozilla will be celebrating the launch of Firefox 3 in late June. Mozilla is sending over lots of prizes/swag for us to give away on the night. The Irish need to live up to the great name we have for partying. Contact Paul Walsh for sponsorship opportunity – paul AT segala.com SPONSORS BY: BT, putplace (http://putplace.com) and Blacknight
To complement our lovely new design we thought it might be cool to get a logo to go with it too. This wouldn’t just be for the site but also for events etc.
David Lenehan from PollDaddy came up with the very smart idea on Twitter of running a competition with prizes. Within minutes we had several offers for those prizes. So we’d like to announce the competition now.
The rules are simple, just send us a sample of your logo(s) in one of the standard bitmap formats by Friday May 2nd to web2ireland DOT editor AT gmail DOT com. We will then publish a post showing them all and a poll allowing you to vote on them. The design with the most votes after one week wins!
The winner will not just get lots of publicity here and a permanent credit on the site but they will also win the following:
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