My new book, Global Neighborhoods, will speculate on where new technology clusters will form. Ireland is a sure bet. While today there is some gamesmanship between the cultures inside and outside Dublin, my belief is that the two cultures will come to "inter-depend" on each other the same way Seattle and Silicon Valley do.
In my day-and-a-half in Cork, I heard of seven start up ideas. Four of them were fretting finance and two of them were being done at home at night because the founders were burdened with day jobs because of the paucity of early phase investment money.
I liked all the ideas I heard. Some are really outstanding. Three that particularly impressed me are:
- Roam4Free, is entirely disruptive to cellular carriers as well as skype. The product is a SIMM chip you will stick inside your cell phone to send and receive free calls to and from most places of the world where you will find yourself. You bypass cellular roaming charges and you are not tethered to your computers like you are when you want a free skype call. It was founded by Pat Phelan, who has a long and successful telecom industry track record. He is supplying Rick Segal and me prototypes to take with us on our world tours, that will just let us receive calls. Last week, he was the first to respond to my "Hire Me" blog and yesterday we cut a deal. The Roam4Free website is currently just a place holder. But Tom Raftery is designing the web and blogsites for Pat this week, and I'm helping Pat with the strategy of what to say and which conversations to join. For the record, I would have written about Roam4Free in any case.
- Sxoop Technology, (don't ask me how to pronounce it) founded by the very likable Walter Higgins. It's one product, PXN8,(pronounce this one 'pixenate') is a photo editor that looked to me to be much easier to use than Adobe Photoshop, with the very cool added advantage of being online. Walter is a veteran of Irish divisions of Apple Computer and Microsoft and still holds a day job, because of sparse financing. His plan is to license the technology to other companies. All the online photo services should take a ticket at the door and wait to be served if you ask me. Walter spoke at the IT@Cork event and just appeared this week at UndertheRadar in San Francisco.
- Nooked provides & measures RSS for larger consumer-oriented companies. Fonded way back in 2004, founder & CEO Fergus Burns says they already have thousands of customers. While Nooked is a "not in Dublin" company," it is also "not in Cork," but in the damper Northwest corner of the country. Still, Fergus may be among the most respected members of the Irish entrepreneurial community, which was clear when he was speaking at IT@Cork.
What I found at least as encouraging was the number of people who have ideas for new companies that sounded like good ideas. The culture seems to be one where ideas and energy and encouragement are being shared. I have the impression that there is a great deal more to come from Ireland, and Rick Segal and I are considering returning there in September. If you have a story, you'd like a writer and an investor to hear, we'd love o bend an elbow with you when we get there.
