Nathalie Kosciusko Morizet, Minister of State to the Prime Minister, with responsibility for Forward Planning, Assessment of Public Policies and Development of the Digital Economy, speaking at Le Web with Loic Le Meur in Paris today.
€2B for broadband upgrades in France out of a €4B budget to invest in the digital future.
We reduce the price of booze and come up with meaningless buzzwords like Smart Economy.
I was really pleased to just get a mail from West Cork Enterprise Board about the Tánaiste’s announcement of changes in the way that CEBs can help small businesses. This could really transform the way that grants are handled around the country and finally puts an end to the silliness of people trying to capitalise the un-capitalisable in order to get CEB support.
The Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Ms. Mary Coughlan, T.D., has today announced new initiatives aimed at supporting the development of new businesses and fostering an entrepreneurial culture in Ireland. New financial supports, consisting of a Priming Grant, a Business Expansion Grant and a Feasibility/Innovation Grant will replace the existing Capital, Employment and Feasibility Grants being operated by the County & City Enterprise Boards (CEBs).
The Tánaiste announced that she has approved a significant broadening of the financial supports that the CEBs can offer their client businesses. The effect of the move is to broaden the scope of the start up and development costs that can be assisted. As a result of these changes, supports will now be available for all legitimate business costs directly attributable to starting a new business, or growing and developing a business, rather than being restricted to asset acquisition.
It’s that time of year again where start-ups all over the island are busy tweaking their business plans for the Seedcorn competition. There is still enough time if you start now and you’re missing out on a big opportunity if you don’t. There is €360,000 in prizes up for grabs.
Do you meet the following criteria?
In the seed, startup or early stages of business development
Incorporated on the island of Ireland
Not more than 5 years old at Friday 25 September 2009
Have a new equity requirement of at least €100,000 (or sterling equivalent)
Have cumulative sales targets of less than or in excess of €5m by year 3,4 or 5
We’re a little slow with the news but it’s still worth mentioning and giving some extra background. Robin Blandford of D4H won the €10k IQPrize last Wednesday and Plink won the audience award of €1k for their elevator pitch.
As one of the judges I can honestly say it was both a privilege and a joy to listen to all 8 pitches on Wednesday. Making the final decision was very very difficult due to the quality of all of them.
If you are an investor, I recommend you study each of the 8 very closely. It is our belief that several of them will have massive exits in the next 1-2 years. All of the others will have very successful businesses and I look forward to being a customer.
The most important aspect of the IQPrize which seems to be impossible to get across to those in power was that it was entirely bottom-up with no cherry-picking or high-potential-labelling or expert-selection or jobs-for-the-boys or who-you-know or what-you-have-done-in-the-past.
Anyone could enter. Anyone.
And because of that we saw the depth of the entrepreneurial spirit in Ireland and the eagerness and hunger to build great businesses as the Zombieconomy collapses around us.
The other critical thing we saw was that many of the applicants had amazing ideas or technology but didn’t have the business background needed to make it a huge success. Incubation programmes like Genesis and Hothouse are critical here but perhaps many of those who benefited from the the boom of the past few years might like to give something back? They could offer to do more than mentoring and actually come on board with some of these businesses and help them go global. CEOs and VPs of Sales in particular could help enormously.
In 249 biz plans there were maybe 5 lunatics. I hope at least one of those proves to be a visionary and we just didn’t see it.
If you didn’t make the final 8 this year, tighten up your biz plan and have another go when the next event like this appears. There will be some feedback later in the summer from the judges overall on what worked for us and what didn’t in terms of biz plan. It was interesting that despite our wildly diverse backgrounds, we usually agreed on those points. Hopefully that will help everyone who applied to build a newer better kick-ass plan.
Well done to D4H, well done to Plink and well done everyone who applied.
The IQPrize pitching and judging will run from 9am-5pm tomorrow. Good luck to all the finalists.
The winner will be announced at a party afterwards which is on from 7pm-9pm in the Source Bar, Level 5, Guinness Storehouse. Each of the finalists will give their elevator pitches before the winner is giving the giant cheque. All attendees can also vote in the People’s Choice award where one of the shortlist can win an extra €1,000.
The Press Release on the IQPrize has just gone out and the important bits are as follows.
Decisions For Heroes (Robin Blandford) –A web application that saves lives by helping rescue teams record and analyze their rescue operations and training
GetitKeepit.com (Alan Coleman) – A web application to help consumers declutter their lives by offering an online portal for the management and retention of important documentation
MyHotel.ie (David and Matt Sherlock) – A website and booking engine that reinvents the traditional booking model, offering hotels a powerful new marketing channel with no booking fees
Neurosynergy Games (David Delany, Lorraine Boran and Michael Boran) – Innovative online brain training application designed to enhance both intellectual (‘IQ’) and emotional (‘EQ’) performance for healthy people and people with specific mental disorders
Octopied (David Behan, Ronan Morris and Michael Flanagan) – A web application for freelancers, helping them manage invoicing, project management, sales and support through one simple and cost-effective tool
Our Writers’ Bloc (Owen Gallagher and Karl Quinn) – An online marketplace that connects self-published authors directly with their readers, and facilitates the distribution of material over multiple formats including mobile phones and e-Reader devices
Pendle House (Michael Furey) – An online currency exchange marketplace that allows companies and individuals around the world to trade currencies directly with each other, cutting out all transaction costs
Plink (Mark Cummins, James Philbin) – An image-driven search engine that allows users take a photo of an object with a mobile phone, and automatically retrieve information about it online
On July 8th, the final candidates will make a Dragon’s Den type presentation to the judges, followed by a public event where the candidates will be able to make a short elevator pitch to the audience. The People’s Choice Award of €1000 and the Grand Prize of €10,000 for the overall winner will be announced at the end of the night.
To add my 2 cents as a judge, I was honestly blown away by the quality of all the biz plans I reviewed. I expected that there’d be lots of badly thought-out, lunatic fringe stuff but I was completely wrong. 90% of what I read could make a feasible business.
Selecting the final 8 was bloody difficult because there were so many great ones submitted. I fully expect to see a ton of those who submitted plans running highly successful businesses over the next few years. I hope they all go straight to their County Enterprise Board or Enterprise Ireland and give them the same plans they sent us.
I don’t know who will win the prize but those 8 businesses could easily generate €100m+ revenues between them.
Here’s hoping IQContent are getting non-stop calls from EI and the CEBs to get access to all the other fantastic plans.
The site goes live at 2pm today. It’s very simple, send IQContent a 5-page business plan that shows how your will turn your idea into a great online business.
The best submissions will be shortlisted and asked to present their business plans before a panel of independent judges.
The final winner will be announced at the end of June.
This bit is important:
We’re not investors. We’re not venture capitalists. We’re not looking for equity and we don’t want any intellectual property. There’s no catch. There are no strings. Seriously.
All details on iqprize.ie. What are you waiting for, get your ass over there!
Last year’s Eircom Fund got a lot of buzz and it was fantastic to see Locle, Touristr, Heystaks and Playza win. They have spent the year busy building their apps with financial and other supports from Eircom.
This year’s Web Innovation fund has been announced and once again they are looking for fantastic web ideas that they can help nuture and promote on the eircom.net site. Each of the 4 winners will get €16k upfront prize money to start with followed by a year of mentoring and support.
Your idea should be in one of the following areas:
Content (e.g. video, short films, animations, UGC)
Movies and TV (e.g. programme recommendations, listings application, information aggregation, content search, fan communities, recommender systems, discovery tools e.g. data visualisations))
Games (e.g. Flash games, game communities, platforms, multiplayer games, persistent worlds, avatar-based social networks, game creation tools, ratings, reviews, gambling)
Seedcamp is holding an event in London on 20th April aimed at Irish and UK start-ups, called Mini Seedcamp London. It will be bringing together 20 of the best seed stage web tech startups with experienced entrepreneurs, investors, and developers from all over Europe to participate in a day of intense mentoring, panel discussions and presentations.
Applications are open now and the closing date is midnight on April 6th. All the details, including how to enter, can be found here.
Mary Boyle in Enterprise Ireland in Sligo has contacted us to let everyone know that a very experienced person from the Irish tech sector is looking to mentor and potentially invest in high potential startups.
If this is of interest to you, then put together a one-page overview of your biz and send it to Mary DOT Boyle AT enterprise-ireland DOT com along with all your contact details.
UPDATE: The person in question is going through all the proposals he has been sent. He is delighted with the level of interest & the potential in the companies. He doesn’t want any more submssions until he evaluates the ones he has. He will get back directly to companies he is interested in talking to.
10th of December 2009 by Conor O'Neill
