Julian Ellison from Tablane has written the best summary of startup funding, finance and the Irish economy that I have ever read. I have one small contribution to make on it. He mentions the Business Angels Partnership and wonders how they “market” ideas that they receive.

I highly recommend that anyone with a strong well-thought out business plan just contact them and talk to them face to face. The basic way they work is that they help people who come in with strong ideas to ensure that the idea has legs and that some basic financial analysis and planning has been done. They also help refine your plan if it needs it. They then have a pool of potential investors and try to match those strong ideas with the right profile of investor.

As it is a fairly new scheme, that investor pool is not huge yet but the more of a buzz that can be created around the BAP, the more investor interest they will get. Tom Raftery did a good post on it recently but it really needs to get discussed in the IT and the Indo and the various business magazines in their non-tech sections to attract individuals without a background in tech who have money available to invest.

[tags]Investment, Business Angel Partnership, BAP, EI, Enterprise Ireland[/tags]