Copacetic

Walter is worried about my previous posts. I think Ireland is knee deep in Entrepreneurs, but we can’t do a straight import of ideas to make Ireland plc. work in the IT sector. We need to invent our own solutions and try and direct our problem solving capabilities to areas where our brethren in overseas (US, China, Vietnam, India) can’t compete. Numbers games won’t work here so smarter focus at much earlier in the pipeline must rule the day.

I can pitch you a 60 second idea, in fact I have a limitless universe of 60 second ideas. But nobody is investing in your idea after 60 seconds. And I have worse news, nobody is going to invest in you after your pitch at NextWeb, or Essential Web ’07 or any of the other favourite rites of passage for startups.

What investors are going to invest in is simple,

• Market opportunity: A big and growing market, without strong incumbents, where you’re company has an unfair advantage.
• Great Team: Stupidly off the scale technical brilliance will get you somewhere here, but is that you? Are you as smart as Sergey and Larry. No I didn’t think so, So great team means great engineering guy, great marketing, great sales guy and/or great “did it before” guy. Or some combination of the above.
• Style, Fashion, Vogue: Investors are herd animals, advertising, social networks and media sites are big at the moment. If you’re pitching something else, prepare to queue.

One minute pitches are the entrepreneur equivalent of shitting in a bottle. Very dificult to achieve and one you’ve done it nobody is interested in the results.

Conor talks about bootstrapping startups in Ireland and the idea sounds good at first blush, but this is Ireland, not America or India. When YCombinator gets to pick the best of Stanford or Andy Bechtolsheim gives 100,000 dollars to two guys with an idea  the demographics have already done there work.

Populations of multi-millions trumps populations of 4 million everytime. I hate to burst people’s bubble, but we simply won’t generate as many entrepreneurs in Ireland as India or the USA, and even if we could we don’t have a touchstone tech  centre where you can go and expect to find them.

What can we do? Go back earlier in the supply chain, get this stuff into the schools, and then we have some hope.  Sorry to rain on the parade guys.