[Ireland] Good news for Irish startups. The Irish government in partnership with Bank of Ireland and Limerick University have announced a new €26m fund for early stage companies.
The Bank of Ireland Seed and Early Stage Equity Fund will make investments ranging from €100,000 to €500,000 and will target “export-oriented high potential firms that operate in the technology, food and financial services sectors”, reports The Irish Times, in addition to a Silicon Valley-esque remit to support patent-pending projects within Irish universities.
The fund, which comprises of €17m from Bank of Ireland, €8m from the government-backed Enterprise Ireland and €1m from the University of Limerick Foundation, will be managed by Kernel Capital.
This is great news for Ireland, but the Governments lack of commitment to Broadband rollout here is dismal and disappointing. The “National Broadband Scheme” is now comprised of a for-pay crappy 3G Modem from 3 Ireland (http://three.ie) instead of the huge funding other European countries have seen.
The UK’s broadband strategy isn’t much better. Can’t remember the speed guarantee but it’s ridiculously low.
Great stuff, but could do with at least one zero added.
If you’re in Ireland looking to build a web app, check out http://Contrast.ie – those guys are amazingly good.
allan branch – If you’re in Ireland and looking to build a web app, you’d be mad not to look at building it on force.com whether with contrast.ie or anyone else (disclosure, I work for salesforce.com).
JK – yes more would be good, but this is a start and not bad considering the Irish Government is about as bankrupt as Bank of Ireland
This is indeed good news, but like many of these announcements the devil is in the detail!
Would be great if there could be some more imaginative uses of the funds i.e. each recipient should be required to ‘hire’ a number of unemployed people to help say market the offering (they could stay on the Governments payroll for a few months). They should also ensure that the business plans for these companies are subject to strong impartial/independent review to help ensure the fund is highly targetted at those best likely to thrive. Alan
First thing that happens when I click on the contrast link in IE7 is a javascript error. Might want to fix that if you’re touting webapp development skills here