1.6 billion dollars of Irish Technology Exits since 2000
Chris Horn was looking for information on technology company exits since 2000. I had some data and with the help of some twitter buddies I grabbed a bunch of others last night.
Some of the numbers are in Euros (very few) and some exits are undisclosed so we can say with some degree of certainty that the the total exit values are,
That sounds like a lot of money (well it used to until our developers and banks blew 90bn) but we need to factor in a few other things get a proper understanding of whether this represents a real return on investment.
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How much was invested (we could probably total EI and IVCA figures to get this number)
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How much employment was generated (this represents tax income to the exchequer and economic activity)
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How many are still employing people in Ireland today
Only when we have this data will we understand the true meaning of the 1.6bn USD.
Incidentally most of the data was retrieved from the excellent Thomas Crosbie Holdings Archives. I recommend site specific searching of this archive use the google site directive. For example to find stuff on Iona,
site:http://archives.tcm.ie/ iona
I have been tagging and information I find with the delicious.com tag #irishexits. Can I suggest anyone else looking do the same.

A great help, many thanks!!
The list doesn’t include the life science exits. I hope to publish a fuller list in a few days or so.
very best
Chris
chris horn
August 14, 2009 at 11:43 am
Yep, I had to go to bed at 1.30am
I’ll try and add life sciences and also who the acquirers were in the next week or so.
jdrumgoole
August 14, 2009 at 12:04 pm
Nice work Joe, pretty amazing this info was not already freely available.
Best of luck with CloudSplit.
P.
Pth
August 14, 2009 at 12:06 pm
I’m working in parallel. Suggest wait until I update the list in next few days, and then you can take another pass over it and see whether I’ve missed some things.
Really appreciate the help Joe!
chris horn
August 14, 2009 at 12:10 pm
Hi Chris,
Well I’m on holidays all next week so trust me, I won’t being doing much with this
Joe.
jdrumgoole
August 14, 2009 at 12:19 pm
Great data, thanks. And you asked the key question.
What did that return to funds and to LPs?
If there was $500m in play, it not at all that good?
/d
David Kirk
August 14, 2009 at 4:06 pm
It’s just a quibble, but the amount “blown” is a lot less than €90 billion
Fergus O'Rourke
August 29, 2009 at 9:05 am
[...] HBan didn’t list anyone, so we compiled our own, based on recent activity, and any tech entrepreneur who had a significant exit in last 10 years [...]
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