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Why Ireland is the best place in the world for a start-up

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Re: Why Ireland is the best place in the world for a start-up

#31

Post by infinite_snoop »

Peroni wrote: post #14

From a business perspective, everything the author says makes sense. From a human perspective, as someone who was born & raised in Ireland and subsequently left the country 6 years ago at the age of 24 I can promise you, Ireland is far from a vibrant, positive place to live. Every single element of the media is drowned in the desperation of the economic crisis, the cost of living is exorbitant and the weather is trul…

After five years in the UK I can say the rain is one of the things I miss the most!

On an anecdotal note most of the CS graduates that I know are not in Ireland any more but are split evenly between the UK and Australia. Also, Dublin is obscenely expensive in my experience.

Re: Why Ireland is the best place in the world for a start-up

#32

Post by dkersten »

amcintyre wrote: post #29
ilcavero wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can tell you that my employers are having such difficulties hiring good engineers here in Dublin that they are opening another shop on east Europe. Might be matter of €€€, I don't know, but the pool of both companies and candidates is quite small here.

I've wondered how difficult the hiring needs to be before companies will consider hiring good engineers to work remotely. So much of the dev work I've done over the years could have been coordinated/overseen from the other side of the world via email/chat/Skype just as well as it was through the (many) useless meetings we had in person.

Some people I know are already working remotely (myself included, though I do contract work, rather than full time employment) - they seem to start working on site and slowly transition to remote. One guy I know is working for a startup in Dublin but recently moved to Berlin and he is working remotely from there.

It still seems rare though and I too wonder how difficult it needs to become before this becomes more accepted.

Re: Why Ireland is the best place in the world for a start-up

#33

Post by kevbam8 »

mattmanser wrote: post #9
davej wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Minister Bruton today announced €60mil in funds designed to help bring VCs to Ireland: http://businessetc.thejournal.ie/bruton-announces-e60m-round...

Does that kind of thing ever work? Just seem one of those schemes ripe for abuse.

Not sure, at least they are attempting to get VCs in anyways.

Re: Why Ireland is the best place in the world for a start-up

#34

Post by kevbam8 »

infinite_snoop wrote: post #31
Peroni wrote: post #14

From a business perspective, everything the author says makes sense. From a human perspective, as someone who was born & raised in Ireland and subsequently left the country 6 years ago at the age of 24 I can promise you, Ireland is far from a vibrant, positive place to live. Every single element of the media is drowned in the desperation of the economic crisis, the cost of living is exorbitant and the weather is trul…

After five years in the UK I can say the rain is one of the things I miss the most! On an anecdotal note most of the CS graduates that I know are not in Ireland any more but are split evenly between the UK and Australia. Also, Dublin is obscenely expensive in my experience.

Dublin isnt as expensive as it was!During the tiger it was crazy expensive,but prices have dropped.

Re: Why Ireland is the best place in the world for a start-up

#35

Post by alain94040 »

kiloaper wrote: post #30
Peroni wrote: post #14

From a business perspective, everything the author says makes sense. From a human perspective, as someone who was born & raised in Ireland and subsequently left the country 6 years ago at the age of 24 I can promise you, Ireland is far from a vibrant, positive place to live. Every single element of the media is drowned in the desperation of the economic crisis, the cost of living is exorbitant and the weather is trul…

>the weather is truly depressing. It's not that bad in my opinion. We have a mild climate. Looking on the bright side we don't get heavy snowfall or droughts or heat waves. Personally I like the lack of extremes.

The problem is that in the context of startups, you are competing with Silicon Valley, which also has no snowfall, no serious heat waves, and 80% sunny vs. 80% rainy.

Re: Why Ireland is the best place in the world for a start-up

#36

Post by kiloaper »

wtvanhest wrote: post #25

I'm sure Ireland is a great place for start-ups, but doesn't seem likely to be the best place on earth. Start-up incubators - Every major city in the US has them, most of them are terrible. The things that I believe make an incubator good are mainly the talented people willing to spend their time with entrepreneurs and the connections which help close future rounds. Simply having incubators isn't a reason to call Ire…

>According to this article, only 32.2% of Irish citizens are college educated, compared with over 40%

That's not surprising given Ireland's demographics and history but a lot has changed over the years. If you look at 25-34yr olds, for example, Ireland is higher than the US at 43.9%. It's also had the highest level of graduates in Higher education per population in the European Union a few times in the last decade (2003 for example). Unfortunately a lot of graduates are now leaving the country, mostly for the US, Canada and Australia.

Re: Why Ireland is the best place in the world for a start-up

#37

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

infinite_snoop wrote: post #31
Peroni wrote: post #14

From a business perspective, everything the author says makes sense. From a human perspective, as someone who was born & raised in Ireland and subsequently left the country 6 years ago at the age of 24 I can promise you, Ireland is far from a vibrant, positive place to live. Every single element of the media is drowned in the desperation of the economic crisis, the cost of living is exorbitant and the weather is trul…

After five years in the UK I can say the rain is one of the things I miss the most! On an anecdotal note most of the CS graduates that I know are not in Ireland any more but are split evenly between the UK and Australia. Also, Dublin is obscenely expensive in my experience.

Being in the process of moving back from London, I can assure you that Dublin is not nearly as bad as it used to be (I lived there in 2007, and it was ridiculous then).

Re: Why Ireland is the best place in the world for a start-up

#38

Post by ilcavero »

dkersten wrote: post #20
ilcavero wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can tell you that my employers are having such difficulties hiring good engineers here in Dublin that they are opening another shop on east Europe. Might be matter of €€€, I don't know, but the pool of both companies and candidates is quite small here.

The company pool in Dublin seems large enough to me (relative to the size of the city) when you count the handful of large companies and the many small companies. The pool of (good) candidates is tiny though - I've spoken to a lot of companies at events like PyCon Ireland and the IrishDev conferences a few years back and just word of mouth through less formal events and everyone is looking for employees! Google, Face…

"The company pool in Dublin seems large enough ... relative to the size of the city" might be true but the city ranks 34th in Europe by population, its just my opinion from my observations but I have been underwhelmed on the opportunities available for IT in Dublin on 2010-2011 when I was looking actively.

Re: Why Ireland is the best place in the world for a start-up

#39

Post by fennecfoxen »

blainm wrote: post #15

Irish person with a CS background here. I think Ireland has similar problems regarding churning out 'talent' to the UK in that there are initiatives in schools for people to use computers but that's about it. The fact we have a much smaller population also means that the small percentage of really good hackers you'd normally expect generally is a small number. To compound things further, those in this category are al…

Yeah, I'm skeptical about the existence of "state run organisations dedicated to helping your business". Not that they can't be useful, but, you'll need to tell me why.

Re: Why Ireland is the best place in the world for a start-up

#40

Post by patrickk »

The article neglects to mention two of the primary reasons why it's good to do business here:

- 12.5% corporate tax rate. Also if you are big enough to afford good tax advice, e.g. Google or Microsoft you can bounce your revenue from Ireland to the Netherlands and into the Caribbean tax-free islands - http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-21/google-2-4-rate-sho...

- Young, native English-speaking workforce. For historical reasons we don't generally speak our native tongue at all. We've a high birth rate, so our population demographic is quite young compared to other developed western nations.

If a multinational (or startup) is looking to expand into the EU, Ireland would be a good bet for a place to open an office for these reasons. The city I live in (Cork) is just an hour flight from London, and it costs €30 ($40) return including taxes and charges on Ryanair. That's cheaper than a train from Cork to Dublin, our two biggest cities. So Europe is highly accessible, and you can freely travel within the EU without customs hassle.

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