I am the CEO of TechIreland – a fairly recent move for me. I previously managed the start-up supports and funding at Enterprise Ireland, who invest over €30million a year in start-ups, so I’ve a good appreciation of what’s needed to grow a tech business.

TechIreland started originally with the aim of tracking and promoting the Dublin start-up ecosystem and over the past two years we have extended it to cover all of the Republic.  Funding is just one indicator, but it is a very important one.  It is a strong indicator of economic activity and investor sentiment.  Tech start-ups and scaleups typically need risk capital to grow quickly.  A healthy start-up funding picture is an essential ingredient for future high growth companies. 

We are now building out our coverage of Northern Ireland so we can give a whole-island picture of the tech start-up and scale up ecosystem.

Why has TechIreland expanded to all-island coverage?

For us, expanding our understanding is a pretty natural development.  We are living on a small island and we need to make the most of our natural advantages.  The start-up community on the island is already fairly-well connected, many investors operate on both sides of the border, but there is lots of room for improvement.  Extending to all-island is something we had planned but we probably wouldn’t have undertaken it quite so quickly if we hadn’t been approached by InterTradeIreland who encouraged us to do so.  InterTradeIreland saw the benefits of connecting the innovation and start-up community on the whole island.

What are the  benefits for tech businesses in Northern Ireland?

There is no cost for the companies to be on our platform, we are a not-for-profit whose objective is to support the tech and start-up ecosystem by informing them about their sector, and promoting the importance of the sector to investors, VC, government agencies, planners etc.  While there tends to be a lot of coverage of the big investments and the large success stories, there is no single source to go to for information, if for instance you are a tech business or an investor or formulating policy and you want to know;

• How much investment went into start-up and scaleup business in N. Ireland last year?
• Where is the investment going – how much into the greater Belfast region, how much to other centres? What sectors are getting the investment?  What technologies?
• How many blockchain business are there in N. Ireland, how many IoT (internet of things), how many med-tech, how many travel-tech etc?  And how much investment have they received, how many employees do they have, are they currently looking for investment or talent, etc?
• Planners and policy makers want to identify areas that need more support, how different regions compare with others on the island and with regions in the UK and internationally.
• Advocates for the sector can speak with more authority when they can cite real numbers as opposed to mere opinions.

Actually, your reader’s business may well be already on our database – we have been tracking investments into N. Ireland businesses since the start of this year and we are now tracking 200 companies, all start-up and scaleup product companies.  Our data all comes from public sources – newsfeeds, press-releases, VCs, the financial press.  If you want to get your company onto the platform, just create a profile here https://www.techireland.org/user/profile