Gordon Murray of eWrite was asking on Twitter this evening what people thought of the idea of him documenting publicly the development of his new product and the business around it. In other words, blogging about it, warts and all.
I think it’s a superb idea and could be of great benefit both to his business [...]

Posted in Business 7 Comments »

Is there any other phrase to describe the mobile operators? From Vodafone’s rip-off hamstrung data plans to the O2’s Paddy Tax on the iPhone, they’d take money from a baby to keep their unsustainable ARPUs up. “Hey Baby Phones! No-one has done baby phones. That’s an untapped demographic. We could coat the phones in sugar.”
Supposedly [...]

Posted in Business 3 Comments »

Just spotted that the YouGetItBack guys in Cork now have a blog. It’s all about the business of Lost and Found and whilst they only started on Monday, the posts are flying in.
I wrote about them on my personal blog wayyy back in June 2006 when I found out about their initial product/service. It was [...]

Posted in Business No Comments »

We had a great exchange of ideas on the previous post about ways of getting very small businesses online. Of particular interest to me are the companies with zero technical ability who just need a solution which involves them typing in some information about their company and then they have a web-presence.
One solution for this [...]

Posted in Business 1 Comment »

A recurring conversation I have had recently is around very small non-technical Irish businesses having a web presence. I do a lot of Tech-Checks for the Cork CEBs and I continue to be surprised by how many of these businesses are invisible online.
One of the reasons for this may be that companies still think it [...]

Posted in Business 14 Comments »

Founders of start-ups tend to spend a lot of time griping about things. I could write an essay on how it took from Aug 28th to Dec 3rd for Enterprise Ireland to issue a document needed to get us BES approval. Instead I’d like to focus on the positive part of that story.
On Dec 3rd, [...]

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Margaret Durand was in touch about the enterprise development programme for women in business that she is involved with.
They have a LAST CALL for applicants for their intensive tailored 6 month programme to aid women in business in the South East achieve their growth goals. There are very few places left so if anyone is [...]

Posted in Business 1 Comment »

I’m really pleased to see how well the Leitrim Business Network is taking off. Johnny Beirne from Leitrim CEB and the team are really pushing it forward. I love seeing them evangelise the opportunities presented by online networking through tools like LinkedIn and of course the site itself is a group blog.
it@cork has shown how [...]

Posted in Business, Community 1 Comment »

Brian Cowen got it all wrong in the December budget. Exchequer receipts were not down in 2007 due to the property market collapse, it’s because we were all on Twitter.
Pat Phelan and Florian Seroussi have calculated a $13.5B hit to the global economy due to Twitter usage reducing productivity in 2007. Using the Runge Kutta [...]

Posted in Business 2 Comments »

Here’s a few quick ones off the top of my head:

Cubic Telecom will have a £100m exit
European Founders, Howzat Media, TAG or Advent will do a deal with a web or mobile start-up here
More foreign VCs will invest in Irish web start-ups than Irish VCs
One of the current batch of Irish Web 2.0 start-ups will [...]

Posted in Business 7 Comments »

I have come to the conclusion that Vodafone will be roadkill on the path to ubiquitous connectivity. I’ve talked to several mobile operators in the past year and they all accept that they must become internet companies, they just don’t know how. This indecision will be fatal if Google decides to go global with Android [...]

Posted in Business, Suppliers 20 Comments »

Argolon Solutions expects to receive RICT Outline approval shortly for its proposed Business Expansion Scheme. Tax Relief for 2007 under the new limits should be possible.
If you are interested in receiving an information memorandum which describes the details of our scheme, please contact me on conor AT argolon DOT com or +353-87-9790297
[tags]BES, Business Expansion Scheme, [...]

Posted in Business, Investment 1 Comment »

Whilst I’ve had a lot of conversations with other start-ups about how the Government can help entrepreneurs more, I’ve also had a few with those who think it should do less.
One of those, an ex-pat Irish Angel, whose thoughts we hope to be able to share with a wider audience in the coming weeks, sent [...]

Posted in Business, Startups 3 Comments »

Cross-posting from the LouderVoice Blog:
We are incredibly excited that an opportunity to attend TechCrunch40 in San Francisco next week has appeared. It is all due to the wonderful Pat Phelan of Cubic Telecom who offered a free ticket to a well deserving start-up. LouderVoice is that start-up and I’ll be there from Sunday until Wednesday [...]

Posted in Business, Conferences, Investment 9 Comments »

This is such a great idea.
On November 1, 2007 it@cork will have their first ever Leader’s Awards. They want to recognise some of the leading companies and individuals in the community and have an evening of networking, reflection and celebration.
There are 4 categories:

Emerging Company Award - to recognise a leading company in early stage [...]

Posted in Business, Community, Events 1 Comment »

I was disappointed to see that no Irish start-ups made it through to the initial 20 on SeedCamp. My gut tells me this is simply due to lack of applications. I only knew of one start-up here that applied. Did you? As the old ad goes “if you’re not in, you can’t win”.
Maybe when they [...]

Posted in Business, Startups No Comments »

OK here’s the deal.
On Thursday September 13th, an event called DemoBar is being held. This is a chance for 10 web startups to demo their product to an audience consisting of their peers, the press, Irish investors, UK investors, Enterprise Ireland, the Future of WebApps conference organisers and a bunch of other people.
Not only [...]

Posted in Business, Community, Conferences, Investment 3 Comments »

I’ve just heard (via Joe Drumgoole’s blog) that the new BES limits annnounced last November have finally been approved by the EU. This is fantastic news.
This is the official EU newsletter announcement:

N 287 / 2007 - Business Expansion Scheme (BES), incorporating the Seed Capital Scheme (SCS).
Member State: Ireland
Primary Objective: Risk capital
Aid instrument: Provision of risk capital
Tax allowance
Case Type: Scheme
Duration: from [...]

Posted in Business, Investment, Jobs No Comments »

It’s not often that people and technology come together so brilliantly as this morning’s Limerick OpenCoffee. I’ve just taken part in their regular session whilst sitting in a kitchen in Wexford.
Conn O Muineachain livestreamed the entire event using Ustream.tv so anyone could logon and see what was happening whilst a chat-channel allowed us to interact [...]

Posted in Business, Events, OpenCoffee 18 Comments »

The Irish Times has covered the latest press release about our Paddy’s Valley trip. The support of Enterprise Ireland in not just important but it is really getting noticed by the press. Finfacts also give us a mention and I was interviewed by Cork 103FM and ENN. There are still plenty of places left but [...]

Posted in Business, Events, Startups No Comments »