The real difference between Europe and the Valley

8 Comments So far, Leave a Comment.

RSS Feed for comments TrackBack URI

• 
  Paul Campbell
  

  December 28, 2007 @ 3:49 am

  …which is why I think there is so much potential for …

  … a Silicon Island—Ireland. People speak of the London community, The New York community, the Boston community, the San Francisco bay area … but the “UK community” — like in this post, “the UK” is too big of a geographical divide. “France”—again, a huge amount of space between hubs.

  Silicon Valley—a network of cities as described above. San Francisco, metropolitan hub in the north (perhaps) … then a string of tech towns to the south, San Jose, Palo Alto, Cupertino, Mountain View, Sunnyvale.

  You write:

  “Europe also has borders, language barriers and of course, cultural differences. Oh and different laws and taxation systems for different countries.”

  Border issues in Ireland aside (I think here they’re irrelevant), Ireland has no language issues (again, irrelevant), a fairly homogenous society and a single government for the 26 counties. Dublin, Belfast, Cork, Limerick, Galway, Sligo … I guess not quite as accessible as San Francisco to San Jose, but the distances are virtually negligible.

  With all the Ireland Inc. / Techludd pro-treaty/anti-treaty back and forth going on, it’s easy to lose site of just how much potential we have to be an island with a strong international reputation.

  

• 
  Paul Walsh
  

  December 28, 2007 @ 11:28 am

  @Eoghan I purposely didn’t write about the advantages that can be gained by starting up a company in Europe (although I think I’ll struggle). That said, doesn’t it take longer to travel from Cork to Dublin than it does from say, London to Dublin? And isn’t there a ‘divide’ between Cork and Dublin as if it was a river separating two entirely different walks of life.

  

• 
  Paul Campbell
  

  December 28, 2007 @ 7:19 pm

  (Hmm, does Paul Walsh see Eoghan and I as the same person?)

  @Paul—I’d love to see a post from your point of view about the benefits of starting up in Europe, perhaps comparing Ireland and the UK with the continent. I’m sure you’ve enough experience and contacts to make some good points.

  I erred away from the divides you mention… In some ways, Ireland already is a silicon island, what with all the big guns having offices here. We have top development agencies. We have top games companies.

  I guess it’s the culture—our culture, that goes against us … a ‘this is my patch, and I’ll defend it to the death’ mindset, as opposed to the ‘hey, wanna share’ attitude that everyone on Paddy’s Valley found so surprising, but has almost consumed me since my first trip to SF in May ( to some extent).

  Add to that the small size of the market, the blindness to global markets, investment that seemingly starts and ends in property and development… and people like me coming to conclusions and decisions without really knowing what they’re talking about…

  …I guess without being to authoritative in my reasoning, like everyone else, I’d love to see Irish web companies out there leading the fold, taking advantage of all the potential, turning the creativity to innovation…

  

• 
  Paul Walsh
  

  December 28, 2007 @ 10:11 pm

  @Paul I’ll put something together. Regarding the big guns being in Ireland, that’s all for tax incentives. Unfortunately for Ireland, most of the decision makers aren’t based there.

  That said, Ireland does have some great qualities, but for me, most of them are outweighed by the shortfalls - such as the lack of telephony infrastructure. Microsoft threatened to pull out unless Eircom got its act together. It’s still crap and expensive now. Everything is so dam expensive too. Anyway, I’ll see what I can put together in terms of advantages - if there are any.

  

• 
  John McCormac
  

  December 30, 2007 @ 8:47 pm

  Because it is so hard to be an entreprenuer in Ireland, those who survive here are generally the toughest and the best. Like the song says: if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.

  

• 
  Paul Campbell
  

  December 30, 2007 @ 10:30 pm

  @John—I like that. I have another theory though. I think that because Irish people are accepting of sub-standard levels of service, the typical entrepreneur gets lazy. Because the customer doesn’t demand the absolute best service outright, the lazy entrepreneur gets sloppy, leading to a downhill spiral and before long, the customer, who wanted the best, but just didn’t articulate it, realises that what they’ve got is shoddiness.

  I think the same principle can be applied to investment in technology / software / internet here. I look at software systems all around Ireland—point of sale software (in retail stores, in restaurants)—it gets the job done, but there’s no… finesse to it. This is where the money is. But if it’s easy to get money for shoddiness and the shoddiness tends to fail, then the investor tends toward caution.

  In my time in the industry (almost exactly one year now) I’ve long understood that the investor invests in the person, not the project. Which brings me back to my first point: the lazy entrepreneur. To which I augment your point : those who survive may be the toughest, they may be the best, but they’re the ones who keep their head and their standards up in a culture where quality has yet to catch on, and laziness seeps through the cracks of the unwary businessman.

  Booya!

  

• 
  Paul Campbell
  

  December 30, 2007 @ 10:32 pm

  Middle paragraph there was a bit unclear. My main point is that a lot of the software and websites out there developed and being sold by Irish companies lacks finesse.

  

• 
  Paul Campbell
  

  December 30, 2007 @ 10:32 pm

  …lacks finesse, yet is being sold with massive profit margins.

  

Leave a comment