Web 2 Ireland

Last year’s Eircom Fund got a lot of buzz and it was fantastic to see Locle, Touristr, Heystaks and Playza win. They have spent the year busy building their apps with financial and other supports from Eircom.

This year’s Web Innovation fund has been announced and once again they are looking for fantastic web ideas that they can help nuture and promote on the eircom.net site. Each of the 4 winners will get €16k upfront prize money to start with followed by a year of mentoring and support.

Your idea should be in one of the following areas:

• Content (e.g. video, short films, animations, UGC)
• Movies and TV (e.g. programme recommendations, listings application, information aggregation, content search, fan communities, recommender systems, discovery tools e.g. data visualisations))
• Games (e.g. Flash games, game communities, platforms, multiplayer games, persistent worlds, avatar-based social networks, game creation tools, ratings, reviews, gambling)
• News (e.g. personalised news gathering, news aggregation, news submission tools, communities of interest, domain-specific news services)
• Music (e.g. Internet radio, streaming / OD services, search / recommendations / personalisation, community tools)
• Sport (e.g. communities, results aggregation, fan communities, results prediction, betting, games)
• Widgets (e.g. any widget(s) based on the above or additional categories)

Closing Date for applications is April 30th and they have a Facebook Group here.

Enterprise Ireland is doing an information evening on starting a tech business in Letterkenny on 25th March.

It looks like a very useful session with speakers on:

• Business Planning Process
• EI supports to High Potential Start ups
• Paul McNulty on starting his own Technology Business

If you wish to attend, please contact marian.roberts@enterprise-ireland.com

Seedcamp is holding an event in London on 20th April aimed at Irish and UK start-ups, called Mini Seedcamp London. It will be bringing together 20 of the best seed stage web tech startups with experienced entrepreneurs, investors, and developers from all over Europe to participate in a day of intense mentoring, panel discussions and presentations.

Applications are open now and the closing date is midnight on April 6th. All the details, including how to enter, can be found here.

Speaking at a press conference in Dublin Castle, Taoiseach Brian Cowen, announced a range of measures to boost the economy – through a new renewal programme – around “Building Ireland's Smart Economy -
A Framework for Sustainable Economic Renewal” – see press release and pdf document on report.

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Some interesting nuggets from the report

Up to €500 million will be generated to create a venture fund, known as 'Innovation Fund Ireland', to support early stage R&D-intensive SMEs. The capital will be divided into five venture funds of between €75-150 million; [see previous post on VC funding in Ireland]

More favourable tax treatment of the carried interest of venture capital is being introduced at a rate of 15% for partnerships and 12.5% for companies to encourage the availability of so-called 'smart capital' for investing in start-up innovative companies who will be the employers of the future;

Entrepreneurship, business start-ups and employment creation will be driven by a number of highly-favourable taxation measures including exemption from corporation tax arising in the first three years of operation for business start-ups, a tax abatement scheme for restricted shares, and a refund in the case of forfeited shares, to
assist companies, including start-up companies, in retaining key employees;

Venture capital investment is still relatively under-developed in Ireland. When defined as formal investment outside public capital markets, which represents total start-up, expansion and buyout investments, Ireland ranks 12th in the EU-15 in this regard;

Ireland ranks 4th across the OECD and 2nd in Europe for the proportion of early stage entrepreneurs with 8.2% of adults in Ireland engaged in entrepreneurial activity in 2007 up from 7.4% in 2006;

High concentration of leading high-tech multinationals many of which have facilitated a huge technological transfer from Silicon Valley to Ireland;

Ireland is ranked as 7th out of 182 countries as a place to do business; the 5th easiest place to establish a business; and the 3rd cheapest location for starting a business. Enterprise Ireland has a strong system to support high-potential start-up enterprises and a growing international presence;

'Smart capital' can be defined as (a) adequate levels of early stage funds for SMEs; (b) providing value-added networks to key decision-makers; and (c) experienced investment managers. European venture funds have performed relatively poorly in comparison to US funds and so it remains difficult to attract the best (Tier 1) VCs from the US. Nevertheless, it is these types of VCs that provide the best possible networks and management experience that can develop Irish-based companies.

Just as Ireland fashioned itself to become the destination of choice for multinational enterprises, the vision is to establish Ireland as The Innovation Island through: Continued substantial investment in science and technology infrastructure and research; A substantial investment in early stage venture capital to commercialise and capitalise on this investment, similar to the Israeli Yozma Fund; The attraction of experienced and top-tier venture partners (including those described as Tier 1 VCs) operating independently to manage to raise capital and focus on deal-flow creation;

To attract high-quality mobile entrepreneurs to set up businesses in Ireland and to assist start-up companies to retain employees, we are providing for a tax abatement scheme for restricted shares;

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Also check Irish Times coverage

Now for some community feedback – please comment on this new framework….