NEW HORIZONS
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The section targets the IDA’s key operating sectors, such as
ICT, financial services and life sciences. “But with the faster growing early stage companies, we find they’re more into in- dustry segments rather than sectors. If you take life sciences, for instance, the companies we’re looking at are into buzz areas like personalisedmedicine and connected health as dis- tinct from pure play pharmaceuticals or biotech. Many of them are into disruptive areas and have disruptive business models. “I’d characterise them according to their business model
rather than their sector: so they’re typically early stage, fast growing, they have been through their early stage funding, and they’re into round A+/round B stage of development.” A number of the businesses that have set up in Ireland
through the division to date are headquartered in California, says O’Dowd. “They’re at the stage where they’re about to burst out of California and scale into
Europe.Alot of the the- matic we use froma marketing point of view is ‘Come to Ire- land and scale for Europe’.”
PROJECTS OVER JOBS O’Dowd says the main objective is towin projects as opposed to jobs. “The more projects we get, the better.We’re sowing seeds and hopefully we’ll hit the jackpot. But if we get 20, 30 or 40 of these spread across the country in various locations that are employing 20 or 30 or 50 or more, it has significant impact. And it spreads the risk as well.” According to O’Dowd, the division takes a portfolio
approach in terms of the companies it targets. “For example, I’d be looking to see if we have a lot of media or content com- panies and are we balancing that with ICT companies or financial services or life sciences companies.We’re conscious of the risk all the time and try to balance that in terms of
managing the portfolio. “These are early stage and fast growing and by their nature
might be more volatile. They might have ingrown obsoles- cence in them. Hopefully they’ll have sustainable business models but some of themmay not andwe have to be aware of that.” The rate of start-ups has been very good to date, he says.
“It’s one thing to get them interested in the idea of Ireland. The most important piece is getting them to implement and our start-ups percentage is very high.” Notable wins over the last couple of years have included
Marketo,EngineYard andRiotGames, all three ofwhich have disruptive models and huge potential for growth going for- ward, says O’Dowd. “Riot Games has about 60 people in the project at this stage and they’re in their third home inDublin. They’re in expansionmode and they’ll be 100 before you know it and probably a lot more.” Since coming into Ireland, the company has been acquired by Chinese multinational, Ten- cent as its vehicle into the gaming business. Other companies of note include Otter in Cork, which pro-
vides protective housing for smartphones;Mycroft, a provider of security management for financial services; Diaceutics, a developer of personalised medicine software, which has set up in Dundalk Institute; and healthcare data analytics and cloud solutions company iMosphere, which is setting up on the University of Limerick campus. The division uses a range of mechanics to identify target
companies, including awards, media lists of companies to watch and various state agencies. “Andwe look at the venture capitalists because we follow the money a bit,” says O’Dowd. The division focuses on hubs of entrepreneurship, includ-
ing San Francisco, SanDiego, SiliconValley, Portland, Seattle, Chicago, Austin, Orlando, Washington, Philadelphia, New
Issue 4 Spring/Summer 2012 INNOVATION IRELAND REVIEW 31
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