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

Good things about Ireland. It is beautiful when it is not cloudy.

The people here are very easy to talk to if you want to have a bit of a chat.

If you want to go visit Europe, flights are cheap.

Bad things Expensive, especially electronics and food. I believe the rent's dropped since the economic crisis but that was pretty expensive too.

There isn't much to do besides drink. Food is terrible. I heard it's gotten better but if you've lived in SF or LA and you love food, don't work in Ireland. There were a nice row of Chinese places on Parnell that were pretty good though.

Customer service is shite.

It rains a lot, which isn't too bad since most of the time it's a light drizzle but then it's always cloudy. The worst part though is the winds that usually comes with the heavy rain as it makes it difficult to carry an umbrella since they'd just break.

Banks open from 10-4 with an hour lunch break during that time (where they'd completely close down) and on some days they'd open half an hour later for "training." When I was there none of the banks were open weekends, with a new bank that was opening up advertising, "OPEN ON SAT" as a benefit of their bank. I didn't have a car and my work was too far from a bank so it was a pain to do any kind of banking that required me to head down there.

This makes it sound like I had a rough time in Dublin, honestly it was pretty fun and enjoyable for the most part. All the bad points are pretty minor but having to deal with it day in day out was not fun.

1. Yes, I agree that it is not near as strong as the bay area, but with the likes of Startup Bootcamp, things are improving on this front.

2. The Python and Ruby Ireland user groups are probably the two most popular programming language user groups in Ireland. While that doesn't mean that they are good, it certainly raises the odds over people who don't attend user groups simply because it shows they are enthusiastic and wish to learn more. Doesn't say anything about overall numbers, however.

3. I disagree - I attended Startup Weekend Dublin the weekend before last and the startup scene (including successful entrepreneurs) is quite vibrant and alive in Dublin - and growing. Personally I was amazed that my group found not only mentors who knew the industry of our project very well, but also potential customers at the event itself and that through a small bit of emailing we got a phone call with another industry leader.

4. Outside of say Startup Bootcamp, I certainly agree with this point.

5. See my comments on Python/Ruby Ireland and Startup Weekend Dublin - I find the community of like-minded indivitduals to be quite vibrant and growing every day (when I started attending Python Ireland, an average meetup might have 4 or 5 attendees and I did not know anyone in the startup scene - now meetups have 30+ attendees and the conferences sell out and I know tons of people in the startup scene, including other hopeful entrepreneurs like myself, successful entrepreneurs, investors.. etc)

Also, don't wait until you graduate to attend these - start as soon as you possibly can. Its never too early to network and you may well save yourself some false starts.

It depends if you're measuring quantity of "it rains" in mm of rainfall per year, or percentage of wet time per year.

Some places are very wet by the first metric, but mostly dry by the second. I haven't spent a lot of time in Ireland, but it seemed to be the other way around.