Tommy used to work on Silicon Docks
What is the connection between Dublin’s cluster of multinational European headquarters and the growth of entrepreneurship in Silicon Docks and beyond? I visited Dublin to find out more…
By Kajal Sanghrajka, @kajalnyclon
Ireland is home to only 4.5 million people but attracts a disproportionate percentage of EU Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). It is the European hub to over 1,000 leading multinational companies with 2016 being a record year of employment within foreign companies hitting 200,000 people.
The FDI success has been a result of coordinated policy efforts over 3 decades between key government agencies and the wider business community and is a more nuanced story than simply the lure of the corporate tax rate of 12.5%.
“We had a good instinct for finding high potential companies early on — Apple, Microsoft and Twitter all set up in Ireland when they were less than 5 years old” explained John Kennedy, editor of Silicon Republic.
He also cited the advantages of the small domestic market “For every entrepreneur today, the first instinct is this idea exportable?” One, literally, exportable idea is Ryanair founded in 1984 and now Europe’s leading low cost airline. Declan Ryan, its co-founder is one of Ireland’s most active supporters of entrepreneurship.
Social Entrepreneurs Ireland (SEI) one of his initiatives supports people who have innovative solutions to pressing social problems. Krystian Fikert, Polish founder of online mental health business MyMind was one of the beneficiaries “We won the SEI impact award and it was a huge boost for us”.
Krystian first immigrated to Ireland as an employee of Google located in Dublin’s “Silicon Docks”. Using domain expertise from Google and his background in psychology he made the leap into entrepreneurship. And his path from multinational employee to entrepreneur is a common one.
On a wet Wednesday morning, I visited NDRC who provide growth capital to digital startups and located next to a Guinness Storehouse for added draw.
They echoed the importance of diverse multinational employees like Krystian whose combined traits of domain expertise and fresh perspectives are a key source of startup talent and innovation clusters.
In numbers, TechIreland shows 775 startups headquartered in Dublin and 230 global tech multinationals; 23% of whom are developing products in Dublin. Growing innovation clusters include Traveltech; 83 companies including Datalex the largest employer and Healthtech startups born from multinationals such as Boston Scientific with more than €700mn in funding.
SaaStock, Europe’s largest B2B Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) conference is also supporting the growth of Dublin as a SaaS hub. “We had 1500 attendees from 44 countries this year” said Alex Theuma founder of SaaStock.
No Beertech as yet but I’d put bets on the success of a Guinness accelerator for beer startups. Or that could be a longwinded description of an Irish pub.
For these clusters to continue to grow up from Silicon Docks and beyond, requires a coordinated immigration policy. Ireland does offer a relatively less onerous pathway to starting a company than many other countries. It also benefits greatly from being a native English speaking country within the EU. But for non-EU talent there is still more work to be done.
I spoke with Sean O’Sullivan at SOSV Ventures who led Open Ireland to make it easier for high-tech workers to have easier access to visas. He highlighted Coderjojo as an example of the impact of immigrant entrepreneurs; co-founded by an Irish native and Australian Chinese immigrant it has grown to a global movement of free, volunteer-led programming clubs for young people.
One particularly innovative model to attract global entrepreneurs was the Competitive Start Fund launched by Enterprise Ireland and led by Peter Lennox. It offers €50k for startups to relocate to Ireland. More importatnly, non- EU founders are eligible for a Start-up Entrepreneur Visa which permits them to reside and work in Ireland.
Many of those I spoke with in Dublin credited Enterprise Ireland as a key contributor to entrepreneurial growth.
After researching 8 city ecosystems on this journey, the general consensus in Dublin of the state being an enabler not an inhibitor for entrepreneurship was refreshing to hear.
The same is true for the city’s culture and communities. I sampled an Entrepreneurs Anonymous event in the heart of Silicon Docks — a community of entrepreneurs founded in Dublin and now in 15 cities. For international entrepreneurs it offers a soft landing with a ready community to support the startup journey.
There are however a few dark sides to Dublin’s ability attract large multinationals — it is coupled with high salaries which startups can’t compete with and an ever increasing cost of living. Both are factors the city will need to manage carefully if it is to remain competitive as a startup hub in the long run.
Walking through Dublin, I could also still feel the impacts of a city hit particularly hard by the 2008 recession. Silicon Docks was once an area of industrial decline but its reconstruction is symbolic of a determined resilience and it has everything to play for in the post-Brexit era.
Acknowledgements
I’d like to thank the following people for their time and insights:
Eoghan at DCU Ryan Academy, Sarah at the Office of the Dublin Commissioner for Startups, Silviu, Jenny and Max at Entrepreneurs Anonymous, Christian at Openback.io, Peter at Enterprise Ireland, Gordon and Rachel at NDRC, Krystian at MyMind, Neil at the Founders Institute, Alex at SaaStock, John at Silicon Republic and Sean at SOSV Ventures.
Anne at Shine and Vic at Nivaura leading up to the Dublin research trip.
About the Transatlantic Post
Written and edited by Kajal Sanghrajka, founder of Growth Hub and a 2017–18 Churchill Fellow, the Post provides an insider look at entrepreneurial ecosystems in cities across Europe/North America.
We interview entrepreneurs, pioneers in policy, academia and investment at the frontlines of each city’s entrepreneurial ecosystem with an emphasis on how cities attract and integrate global immigrant entrepreneurs. We report from a different city each month.
Full findings are available via a special email at the end of each month.
Sources and Recommended Reading
- Open Ireland Winning the Battle for Global Talent — Silicon Republic
- The Evolution of Dublin’s Silicon Docks — DublinInTech
- Tech Multinationals to Start Ups — Irishcentral
- Ireland sees FDI rise — The Financial Times
- Traveltech in Ireland — TechinIreland
