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 »

The Enterprise Ireland and InterTradeIreland VC Forum pitching event in Silicon Valley on Tuesday looks to have been a great event. Five Irish web start-ups pitched to a panel of local VCs and an invited audience. You can see all the videos over at the Paddy’s Valley blog. The really interesting part for me was [...]

Posted in Events, Investment 1 Comment »

CorkBIC have arranged a briefing session on BES/SCS next Monday too. Whilst the Rubicon session is specifically targetted at start-ups, this one is more for the wider business community.
Short presentations will be made by:
Kevin Kenny, Tax Partner, Ernst & Young
Clare Creamer, Assistant Principal, Revenue Commissioners
Gerry O’Brien, Enterprise Ireland
Monday 12th November at 4pm – 5.15pm (to [...]

Posted in Investment No Comments »

Good post from Alan of Spoiltchild wondering about their investment strategy for Toddle and future apps. If you have any knowledge in this area, why not head over and leave a comment?

Posted in Investment No 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 »

We will be announcing our BES scheme as soon as the initial paperwork has been processed.
If you want to hear more about any of the investment opportunities in Argolon Solutions and the LouderVoice web-site please contact me via any of the methods listed here.

Posted in Investment 2 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 »

As anyone who has kicked off a BES scheme knows there are a few simple steps you have to do in order to qualify. The key one is a “New Company Cert” from Enterprise Ireland or a CEB. To qualify for the cert they generally give you a small employment grant (a Feasibility Study Grant [...]

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At the Essential Web conference last week Saul Klein announced SeedCamp. This is an incredibly important initiative that will help grow the spirit of entrepreneurship across Europe. It basically takes a YCombinator type model and implements it here.
For those of you who don’t know, YCombinator is hugely successful project of Paul Graham in the [...]

Posted in Business, Investment, Startups, Web20 No Comments »

Essential Web 07

Fantastic day with a strong mix of investors and entrepreneurs. Some wonderful pitches and a killer opportunity for start-ups

We were thrilled [...]

Posted in Business, Conferences, Investment 1 Comment »

We sent out this press release yesterday:

LouderVoice, a new kind of reviews web-site, is the only Irish company invited to present at the Essential Web 2007 conference in London on June 27th. This one-day event will showcase and celebrate Europe’s web innovators.
The purpose of the event is to provide a picture of the status and [...]

Posted in Events, Investment, LouderVoice, Press No Comments »

I’m hitting Amsterdam at 5pm tomorrow for both the International OCC and TheNextWeb Conference. I’ll demo LouderVoice to as many people as I can and I’m looking forward to the VC Speed Pitching session at lunchtime Friday. I’d better practice my elevator pitch tonight.
If you want to contact me from midday Thursday onwards I’ll be [...]

Posted in Investment, OpenCoffee 5 Comments »

I did a short interview with Emma McNamara this afternoon for Radio 1. The overall theme of her piece was “The Economy” and as with other items in the series they took a regional focus which was Cork/Munster on this occasion.
I talked for far too long about the start-up scene down here, Open Coffee, LouderVoice, [...]

Posted in Business, Community, Investment, LouderVoice, OpenCoffee No Comments »

Go, read Ben Barren’s post on ” Who Will Fund Local Web 2.0 Aussie Businesses?” and replace Australia everywhere with Ireland.
It’s a simple formula, I believe it can work.
Anything is better than where we are right now. When your VC activity is mentioned in the same sentence as Romania, you know you have a [...]

Posted in Business, Investment No Comments »

Wow that was some morning in Luigi Malone’s! I’d never been there before and the venue was just perfect. I arrived in to find a few of the guys along with Don the owner who stayed for the entire session. A huge thanks to Don for covering the cost of the refreshments today and for [...]

Posted in Business, Community, Enterprise, Investment, Jobs, OpenCoffee 13 Comments »

After a bit of discussion the inaugural Cork OpenCoffee Club will be held at 10am this Friday 16th in Luigi Malone’s on Emmet Place in Cork City Centre. UseAMap.
The aim of the club is to bring together a good mix of entrepreneurs, investors, developers and marketers, plus anyone else who is interested in growing the [...]

Posted in Community, Investment, Marketing, OpenCoffee 18 Comments »

My blood can stop boiling now. The EU has turned down the objection regarding the new BES scheme by the employment-haters in the ICTU. This should accelerate the overall approval process and enable us to hire staff and build a profitable company which contributes to the exchequer and Irish economy in multiple ways.

Posted in Business, Investment 3 Comments »

Starting with Saul in London followed quickly by Eoghan in Dublin and James/Jan in Limerick, it looks like the OpenCoffee Club idea really does have legs. The core idea is that a regular informal meeting is held in a coffee shop where we try to bring together entrepreneurs and investors to discuss topics of mutual [...]

Posted in Business, Community, Investment 7 Comments »

Jan over at Touristr has written a really useful post on spending as little as possible on building a web-app here.
We’ve avoided going down the bank loan route as we assumed that a pre-launch start-up would have a hard time securing one. The Seed Capital Scheme is definitely worth a look and the Feasibility [...]

Posted in Business, Investment, Startups 4 Comments »