Web 2 Ireland

We’re very excited to announce the launch of the Web2Ireland SeedFund I.

The fund seeks to

* invest in 30 to 40 seed stage startups
* average bite size of €100K
* able to lead, co-lead or follow other firms or angel syndicates
* focusing on consumer Internet and mobile
* capital efficiency, great teams, differentiated ideas and flexibility
* working hand in hand with the best VC firms in Europe and Silicon Valley
* An advisory board of leading Internet stars
* Address the market need !!

Stay tuned for more news

Finalists Announced from Dublin Workshop : Innovate!Europe.

These eleven companies will now advance to the Master Class, to be held in Zaragoza, Spain May 4-6. Congratulations go to:

Byte Surgery/Decisions for Heroes tools to enable emergency rescue personnel and volunteers to collect and analyze data at emergency scenes

Emergence SaaS application that provides real-time risk management across a range of corporate business functions

iFoods Ltd/LookandTaste.com professionally-produced and user-generated digital video library of recipes; online video glossary of food and kitchen terms

IGoPeople software that socially connects consumers and businesses to better build brands and enable consumer involvement in marketing

Locle location-aware social networking tools to identify people and places on mobile devices

LouderVoice SaaS application that enables customers to review products and provide feedback on business sites

PutPlace cloud storage platform for consumer PC- and Web-based digital media and information

Revahealth online directory of health clinics, providing a detailed and normalized view of services and medical personnel

Sentry Wireless security for mobile phone devices by providing a firewall on a SIM card. First product is a service that insures the privacy and safety of children when using mobile phones

Toddle provides easy-to-create email marketing campaigns for small businesses, leveraging the tools with which customers are already familiar: Outlook and a browser

TouristR interactive online travel planner that allows users to plan, book and share their travel with an innovative search tool

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Now Innovate!Europe are looking for other Europe's top startup – and the deadline to apply is March 23rd.

Innovate!Europe will be hosting Going Global workshops and networking meetups in Europe and Israel from March 30th – April 8th – check calendar

Start-ups will receive mentoring and feedback from Guidewire Group's renowned analyst team on how to improve your pitch and hone the skills you need to compete in fast-paced markets like Silicon Valley.

Best of all, there is no cost to apply or to participate in the Going Global workshops.

Start-ups in the workshops held so far have raved about the experience. Conor O'Neill of LouderVoice, called it pure gold and said it was the most impressive start-up workshop I have ever encountered.

If you want to participate in the competition but can¹t attend one of the workshops, fill out the form anyway.

If you’re selected, Guidewire Group’s analysts will conduct a phone interview with you.

Note: You don't need to be a workshop participant to attend one of the networking meetups. The meetups are also open to investors, journalists and other members of the entrepreneurial community. However, an RSVP is required as space is limited.

Facebook recently announced their new

FBFund.

The fbFund is a $10 million seed fund managed by Founders Fund, Accel Partners, and Facebook.

After the recent Facebook Developer Garage Ireland we should see plenty of entries from Ireland.

IQContent announced the iQ Prize at FOWADublin.

Iona Technologies founders Chris Horn and Sean Baker, Norkom founder, Paul Kerley and entrepreneur, Brian Caulfield – have joined up with Marrakech founder, Kelly Murphy in a new stealth startups – called Gridstore.

The company is developing next-generation data storage system. Check recent SBPost article .
[limited info available - feel free to send comments]

Appreciate if folks can complete this survey so we can capture feedback from the events.

Thanks Folks

Polldaddy have launched their API – 68% of Polldaddy activity is via API – pretty impressive.

Mashable has more details on

Adding Polls to Your Applications with PollDaddy's API.

Facebook in Ireland is exploding in popularity; 400k+ users at last count. But it’s not just the number of punters that is growing, so too is the development community.

We are genuinely excited therefore to announce Ireland’s first Facebook Developer Garage, brought to you by Web2Ireland on march 5th in the Digital Exchange in Dublin.

The Garages are just like they sound a place to explore, get gritty, tinker, experiment, and test out ideas for Facebook Platform.  We also want to use it as an opportunity for the Irish FB developer community to network and learn from each other. See the London site to get an idea of what they are all about.

If you are interested in presenting what you are working on in Facebook or giving a demo, just email web2ireland.editor@gmail.com

Please RSVP on Facebook if you are attending in any capacity. This is a completely free event and we are very appreciative of the support being provided by Facebook themselves.

We will have some further very exciting news about the Garage in the next two weeks.

And if that’s not enough for you, Web2Ireland is also hosting a mini-workshop on API Wars and Opportunities before the Garage. See the next blog post!

A quick bit of background…

A few months ago, Niall Smart contacted us in relation to his new startup – and we did a post where he was looking for a co-founder for his stealth startup – Cloudsync

Niall hooked up with Vinny Glennon and Cormac Driver – and these guys were accepted to the world famous Y Combinator in San Francisco.

Cloudsync is now known as Echodio – and Niall pinged us over the weekend to let us know that they’ve been shortlisted by the SXSW music+film+interactive festival to present at SXSW Accelerator, their showcase for technology startups.

One of four finalists in the music category – picked from over 200 applications.

Best of luck to the lads – keep the Irish flag flying….

Just picked up from Pat Phelan, founder and CEO of Maxroam’s blog on the news that MAXroam has partnered with Dopplr

Congratulations to Pat and team – and no doubt this is the first of many white label partnerships we will see from them in 2009

Press Release below…

Cubic Telecom partners with Dopplr to help travelers save thousands on roaming mobile user

MAXroam, the mobile roaming product from Cork-based Cubic Telecom, will be available in Dopplr’s online travel shop. Dopplr is an online service for smarter travel that helps the world’s most frequent travelers meet up with their trusted friends and colleagues around the globe.

Today Dopplr announced an online store with MAXroam as one of the key products. The store, which is available to all Dopplr travelers, contains a number of special offers on products and services to make travel better.

Speaking about the partnership, Cubic Telecom’s CEO Pat Phelan stated “We’re delighted to be working with Dopplr. MaxRoam’s SIM card will enable Dopplr travelers to save a minimum of 70% on their mobile travel bills.”

Within nine months of its launch in September 2007, MaxRoam had saved travelers more than $1 million on their roaming mobile bill and almost $1.7 million to date. These savings will now be extended to Dopplr members with a Dopplr SIM and website to manage their mobile usage while traveling.

About Dopplr – www.dopplr.com

Dopplr is an online service for smarter travel. Dopplr helps you make more of your travels by sharing your future trips privately with friends and colleagues. The service then highlights coincidences, for example, telling you that three people you know will be in Tokyo when you will be there too. You can use Dopplr on your personal computer or mobile phone. It links with many popular online calendars and social networks.

About Cubic Telecom

Cubic Telecom is one of the world’s first and largest suppliers of travel SIMs, which abolish high roaming fees that are usually charged by incumbent Mobile Network Operators (MNOs).

The company offers a 100% white label platform where MVNOs can customize everything as their own, including having their own branding of SIMs and web portal, plus customized audio prompts and short-codes.

MVNOs can set up multiple sub-distributors, each with their own discrete pricing, and customization, through Cubic’s innovative new offering.