In a recent blog post, Mark Evans, head of ME Consulting, spoke about his visit to the Web Summit conference held in Dublin, Ireland. Evans works with startups and entrepreneurs to fulfill their marketing needs and claims in the post that the Irish start-up scene and the Canadian start-up sector are very similar. He came to this conclusion after speaking with various government officials, organizations that deal with the high tech sector as well as start-ups based in Ireland.
One of the major similarities Evans noted is that both countries have a very vibrant and energetic start-up sector. Evans found that the city of Dublin had many people that wanted to be involved with early stage technology companies and the small community of entrepreneurs was tight knit. Much like Canada, the community supported each other in many aspects.
Dublin may not currently have very many big name start-ups on the world scene, but the community is growing very fast. These firms are making strong inroads with both customers and investors. They are being helped along the way by business accelerators like LaunchPad and incubators like Dogpatch Labs. Evans also spoke about events like Open Mic Idea Jam. This is held at a pub and allows entrepreneurs pitch their ideas to people in the bar in an informal and collaborative environment.
Of course Canada and Ireland and not the same in every aspect, a point that is noted and explored by Evans. He discussed that the Irish government is making major investments in the start-up sector in the country. A government agency named Enterprise Ireland, supports 150 start-ups every year. They do this by using an “early-stage ‘high potential’ program, and a Y Combinator-like ‘Competitive Startup Fund’ that invests €50,000 into pre-revenue startups.”
“Enterprise Ireland also raised €175-million for fund-to-fund investments in seed and early-stage venture capital firms, and it committed €10-million to attract international startup entrepreneurs to Dublin.”
Sadly Canada does not have a specific government agency that is meant to nurture the early stage technology businesses in the country. Evans says that Canada has a “scattered approach that involves tax credits for R&D, a government agency (The Business Development Bank of Canada) making direct and fund-to-fund investments, a federal program that matches private sector investments (FedDev) and a $400-million commitment by the Conservatives in the last budget to boost VCs.”
Evans says in his post that the lesson he has learned from his time in Dublin is the “important role the different levels of government could take if they had a well-articulated and cohesive plans of attack to support and nurture the startup community.” His point is that the Canadian government needs to be a little more focused with their approach to the sector to get the best results possible. It seems that they do want to help the start up ecosystem in the country but are not sure how to do it in order to maximize effectiveness in what is likely an important part of Canada’s economic future.
Source: Mark Evans Tech
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