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DIGITALWORLD
One of the amazing things about the event
is how it defines the mood of optimismin technology today and makes a refreshing di- version fromtalk about recession and the euro crisis. Niklas Zennstrom, who runs his own ven-
ture capital firm Atomico, and master- minded Skype’s recent sale to Microsoft for US$8.5bn, captures the essence and atti- tude of today’s
dot.comstalwarts. “If you look at this economic crisis and
the last one, there hasn’t been a big differ- ence in terms of entrepreneurs starting companies or not. If you’re an entrepreneur or are becoming an entrepreneur, you think you have a great idea. You don’t think about if the economy’s good or bad. But one big change that I’ve noticed is that when I startedmy own company the first time over 10 years ago, people were saying that I was leavingmy job, that I had a secure career and that it was a big uncertainty starting my own company. “Today, in a bad economy, people know
that there is really no job security anymore so there’s not as much risk trying to set up a company as there used to be because the job security isn’t there anyway. In a way, it’s good when the economy is a bit bad on ac- count of people saying ‘well, we need to do something, we can’t just rely on big compa- nies continuing to employ us’. In a way, it’s stimulating entrepreneurs to start compa- nies and try new things,” he says. “When we were here last year, we saw
‘Ireland has really built a very solid technology base and it simplymade a lot of sense for LinkedIn and other companies to be in Ireland and to leverage the talent that’s here. I think it’s a great gateway to theEuropean community’
ERICLY,CO-FOUNDER, LINKEDIN
want to be up in the high 90s, we think it’s possible.” Birch says the F.ounders experience
where founders of successful technology companies get to spend time together is quite unique. “This is the second year that F.ounders has been on – I was here last year as well. I never go to confer- ences with a goal in mind but it’s an amazing opportunity to network with a lot of really interesting people. I met a lot of people last year that I still have very close contact with. The whole group seemed to stay in contact after F.ounders had finished. At least half of the people there have come back again this year.”
INTERNET CAPITAL OF EUROPE Dublin’s reputation as the ‘Internet Capi- tal of Europe’ is underlined by IDA Ire- land’s success in bringing some of the biggest names in technology to these shores, including Facebook, Google, Twit- ter, Zynga,
Amazon.comand Microsoft, while last year LinkedIn came to town with plans to generate 100 jobs in the city. Attending theWeb Summit and
several Irish start-up companies and we’ve had dialogue with a number of them.We haven’t made any investments in Irish com- panies yet but that’s just a matter of time because the number of investments we do each year is quite limited so I think, over time, we’ll find a few companies to invest in. There’s certainly a lot of good talent here and there are people who are good entre- preneurs.” Michael Birch has co-founded a number of technology com-
F.ounders was LinkedIn co-founder Eric Ly who sums it up well. “I think there are many advantages to being in Ireland. In Silicon Valley, there’s seems like a lack of technical talent to grow companies and for many decades now, Ireland has really built a very solid technology base and it simply made a lot of sense for LinkedIn and other companies to be in Ireland and to leverage the talent that’s here. I think it’s a great gateway to the European com- munity.” Another of the attendees at the Octo-
PhilipKaplan, entrepreneur and angel investor
panies – most famously social network Bebo, which he and his wife Xochi sold to AOL for US$850m. He has also invested in numerous companies. He recently set upWaterForward, a fundraising website
forWater.org to provide clean drinking water for developing nations. He defines the attitude of think- ing big and having goals that seemunreasonable at first, but which mostly succeed in changing everything. “Overall, charities have raised about 5pc of their money on-
line, which really is next to nothing given how powerful you’d think it would be,” he says. “CharityWater raised 73pc of their funds online which is one of the highest in the industry.We
46 INNOVATION IRELAND REVIEW Issue 3 Autumn/Winter 2011
ber event was John O’Farrell, an Irish- man who went to the US to study at Stanford in the 1980s and has wound up being one of the most powerful venture
capitalists in Silicon Valley. O’Farrell led cloud computing firm Opsware through the
dot.comdownturn and built the busi- ness to a point where it was bought by HP for US$1.6bn. He is now a partner at venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, which holds stock in some of the highest valued privately held social media companies including Facebook, Groupon, Twitter, Foursquare and Zynga. “I have met some interesting companies,” O’Farrell says. “I
would say Ireland has potential. It is really important, particu- larly for a small market like Ireland, to focus on gigantic mar- kets up front and that usually means the US. “Having a Silicon Valley and Irish presence is better than being pure Ireland-based, so maybe put your management
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