Why Ireland for Entrepreneurs and Start-ups?

Ireland has a healthy Angel and VC network with over €250 (330 USD) million available in seed funds through organisations such as HBAN and also a healthy VC community such as ACT Venture Capital, Bloom Equity, Kernel Capital, Enterprise Equity but to mention a few.

The government is very much helping start-ups through one of its agencies Enterprise Ireland (EI) with seed funding where they will co-invest with V.C.’s and Angels in Startups. Not bad considering the population of Ireland is only 4.5 million!  Ireland is also one of the best locations in Europe for R&D through tax incentives, grant aid and a corporate tax of only 12.5%

In a report prepared for the Commission’s Directorate General for Economic and Financial Affairs for Europe, it found that Ireland was the top European country which recruiters found were producing the “most Employable” graduates.  The government also wants to double the amount of college graduates in Software, proving Ireland is long term when it comes to R & D software.

With headquarters for some of the internet, software and hardware giants having their European head quarters based in Ireland such as PayPal, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Intel, LinkedIn and Dell, Ireland has a great technical, knowledge based community and willing to help start-ups.  This is great if you are planning to use the platforms for your products/services.  No wonder Ireland is one of the largest producers of software in the world.

3 of Europe’s top 8 Accelerators are based in Ireland of which one is the Propeller Venture Accelerator.  DogPatchLabs has also set up is first non-US Location, setting up its European lab in Dublin.

As a location Dublin is one of the most cosmopolitan and vibrant cities in the world.  Within 2 hours you can fly to anywhere in Europe and yet we are the closest European country to the U.S.

By Terence Bowden

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