[nfg]

> Producing indigenous firms which don't serve niche markets is still beyond us.

I'm not sure about that, I've been in Havok (http://www.havok.com/) for several years now, very successful Irish startup in the Games/Entertainment space (hardly a niche), acquired by Intel three years ago ($100m+). Granted there's room to improve in terms of the number of indigenous startups, but there are success stories out there.

[dkersten]

In my opinion, Havok is an outlier success story though. Sure, there are a few other Irish startups that achieved phenomenal global success, but they are relatively few and far between when compared to the more startup-focused places like SV.

[nfg]

True, I was mostly responding to the notion that:

> Producing indigenous firms which don't serve niche markets is still beyond us

It certainly isn't "beyond us", but as you say it's not happening as much as one would hope.

[dkersten]

Ah, I agree. Perhaps I misunderstood what you meant the first time around.

[patrickk]

What about Stockbyte? Sold for $136m in 2006.

http://www.rte.ie/news/2006/0406/stockbyte-business.html?rss

Also, Jerry Kennelly (who sold Stockbyte), is running a seed capital program somewhat similar to YC, called the Endeavour program: http://www.endeavour.biz/ application date was yesterday. I posted a comment here the other day that we need to stop this Irish attitude of moaning about everything, and start doing stuff.

Another funding program:

http://www.ndrc.ie/

From what I've heard also, the banks are being forced to provide funding to startups, but that there isn't enough demand as of yet.

Check http://siliconrepublic.com/start-ups/ regularly to see what's going on in Ireland in relation to startups.

[dkersten]

Regarding Stockbyte, I never said there wasn't any other successful Irish startups besides Havok, just that they are few. We can hope that this is improving though.

Thanks for the links, though. Very useful. Hopefully the two funding programs are better than EI and the other ones I've seen in the past. I definitely see the startup situation improving here, its just happening very slowly and I think a greater focus on startups would be good for our economy (though I don't know what more can be done to help that along).

[patrickk]

"....though I don't know what more can be done to help that along"

Both my parents are secondary level teachers, yet I hold the controversial opinion that we should put a huge emphasis on teaching the basics of computing and programming to children at the primary school level. I remember doing some light programming in BASIC on a toy VTech "computer" when I was about ten, but I would have progressed far quicker and learned "skillz to pay teh bills" if there was someone who could've opened my eyes to the possibilities of programming at a younger age.

[dkersten]

I agree, that would be a very beneficial thing for science and compsci in general, not just startups.

Actually, I was EXTREMELY disappointed with our second level computer education (in relation to computers). Out of my class, only one other person went on to study something computer related (and not a computer science degree). The school made little effort in trying to promote such things and instead focused on the usual (mechanical) engineering and business type things that are (or were when I was in school, anyway) so popular. Yet those are industries (as far as I see, anyway) badly affected by the recession. Schools, in my experience - I'm sure some are better than others in this respect, put much too little emphasis on computer education, even though it has become such an integral part of most peoples lives and certainly of business. I think some solid computing and programming education for primary level children would be a great advancement for our country, but honestly, second level education is so lacking in that area that I think any additional computing-related education would be beneficial.

In fact, it should be a mandatory part of education for everyone. Even if most people are disinterested and do something else, the problem solving and analysis skills would serve them well whatever they do. It would also expose people to computers and programming who would otherwise have overlooked them. For example, all this hype about getting women into computing could, in my opinion, be tackled by introducing everybody, male and female, at an early age.

[echubb]

I'm not suggesting that Ireland is devoid of successful startups, just they seem to be the exception rather than the rule. We have also had Baltimore, Iona etc but we should be producing way more.