Tyrolean - Web Design and Development

I was at the Innovation Accelerator Day on Tuesday 25th February. It was sponsored by the Microsoft BizSpark programme (are they involved in BizCamp?).

Speaker selection on the day was mostly great, deciding who to see took some internal debate I have to admit, some speakers weren’t so great. I’ll name no names but I had now idea that footprint recognition software could be so boring. In fairness to that particular speaker they did get into their stride towards the end.

Finding out about the incubator programmes in the country was of particular interest to a lot of attendees imo. Representatives were present from:

• NovaUCD - Dublin
• DIT’s Hot House - Dublin
• LEAP - Limerick
• WESTBIC - Galway

All excellent programmes, if you’re a tech start-up it would be worth having a chat with at least one of them. A couple of points on funding and incubation of note, there seems to be a lack of support after year one for companies, the above programmes are aware of this and putting solutions in place, and that companies need purchase orders as much as they need funding. These could be and should be coming from the public sector, fat chance of that with the current cuts.

Personally I think the most important part of the day was getting to meet like minded people, Robin Blandford from ByteSurgery and Iarfhlaith Kelly of Webstrong in particular. They seem to be a step or two ahead of me in that they’ve completed development on their projects and have gotten their businesses out of the home office (read: spare bedroom).

What’s really exciting though is the innovation coming out of Dublin at the moment. Its a great time with small entrepreneurs starting small tech businesses which have great potential. One message I took from the Innovation Accelerator is that although your current venture mightn’t attract investment its a mandatory step on the way to a venture that will, see RevaHealth’s recent funding for an example.