Archive - page 2
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How Capital Gains Tax Strangles Irish Startups
The budget is coming early this year, and rumour has it that Minister Noonan will once again increase the Capital Gains Tax. CGT has been increased four times since 2008, and now stands at 33%, one of the highest rates in the world. Each increase has been a shocking blow to Irish entrepreneurs, who have been trying to battle poor economic conditions and build businesses, creating new jobs and indigenous growth.
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Ditching the Pitch
The seventeenth century polymath Blaise Pascal famously quipped that he was sorry for the length of his letter - he didn’t have time to write a shorter one. Woodrow Wilson extended his point to say that he needed a week to prepare a ten minute speech, but could talk for a full hour off-the-cuff. Nowadays, thanks to the success of The Dragons’ Den TV show, startup founders are realizing the real cost of the five minute pitch.
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The Venture Chasm
The technology sector is buzzing and we’re hearing more about venture capitalists than any time since the dot-com bubble. With part of your pension and some of your taxes invested in venture capital funds, you may be curious to know how they are doing.
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Speaking on the Dublin Startup Scene at Irish Times FUSION
Footage from a short mentoring session and interview I did at the Irish Times FUSION accelerator program. Watch from 5:20 for my inspirational stump speech on the terrific Dublin startup scene.
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Speaking at TEDx
I gave a talk on intellectual property at TEDx at Goodenough College in London in February 2013. I focused on patents, how they have fallen out of step with the modern pace of innovation, and as a result are now causing more problems for innovation than they solve. I’d love to hear your responses!
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Scale Front featured in the Irish Times
Pamela Newenham wrote a great piece on us in the Irish Times today, 22nd November 2012, featuring one of our products, TechTeams, before going on to discuss Scale Front in general, and the startup lab approach that we are applying.
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4G to Empower Indigenous Digital Industry
Although both our economy and our people are depressed, there was a ray of light in this week’s auction of the part of the radio spectrum necessary for next-generation “4G” mobile networks. Our talented twenty and thirty year olds are joining the diaspora abroad, and the majority of my own circle of friends have fled, only to pop back up on Facebook from new locations such as Vancouver, New York, London and Japan. What’s particularly annoying are their Facebook updates, such as “ordered 100Mbps home internet last night for $30, installation finished this morning”.
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Make an Impact: Start a Startup
I gave the keynote speech at the Python Ireland Conference on October 14th 2012. I proposed that Dublin is one of the world’s best emerging startup hubs, uniquely situated as the gateway between Europe and America. As programmers, we enjoy a blend of productivity, low costs and global reach previously inaccessible in any profession. In both geography and history, we are privileged in our ability to make a dent in the universe. Irish programmers should be founding startups, and I shared some tips for those who want to get started.
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The Talented 38: Ireland’s top technology and startup leaders
Dylan Collins and I put our heads together to make a list of Irish people under forty who are leading the startup and technology scene. Watch these names closely. This post has been jointly published here and on Dylan’s blog at Founderware.
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Work Permits and the Knowledge Economy
The “knowledge economy” is a powerful vision of Ireland’s future, one that sidesteps the disadvantage of being a nondescript mid-Atlantic island with a pitiful domestic market, while playing to our Anglo-American cultural strengths. Unfortunately, our so-called knowledge economy depends on a failing supply of knowledge workers, and immediate steps must be taken to source more of them. In this post I’m going to make the argument that foreign knowledge workers are not only necessary to maintain the presence of existing multinational employers, but that they are desperately needed if we want to turn our booming startup scene into a highly profitable domestic technology industry.