Letters from the trenches (founder of Phive).
ISA – 150 members, indigenous technology businesses, entrepreneurial and export oriented.
The current environment. Irish R&D expenditure 2006 400m, 2007 1bn.
Early stage still gives us the best ROI (2004 numbers).
ISA Survey. 6 entrepreneurs. Current model is not a meritocracy its random. Funding focused on multi-nationals. Commericalisation process varies across institutions. Process convoluted and entrepreneur unfriendly.
No clear roadmap for funding across colleges. Focused on flighty P.hDs.
Change. Aims of government R&D retaining Multi-nationals and training people for multi-nationals. Now commercialisation, startups and spinouts. SFI. Globalisation. New people. Lots of non-nationals.
Behavior. People behave as if we know what we are doing. The situation requires new approaches.
US and Israel prove the startup model.
How do we maximise this opportunity.
Best practice. Israel invested 10bn in VC. World beating research, Entrepreneurs, route to market consumer or multi-nationals.
Don’t take the technology out of the university to early. Israel focuses very heavily on incubation.
SFI and EI are well aligned on the move from R&D to commercialisation.
Startups are not linear. Map networking activity over the pipeline. Business formation issues are done right at the start in the US.
Best practice is defined by financial success.
Involving major multi-nationals is key.
A business startup is a singularity driven by a series of network events.
Challenges. Access to UNI R&D is confusing. No list of Irish R&D projects in Universities.
Jockeying for position, EI, SFI, multi-nationals, Universities.
Entrepreneurs in a weak position. Academics have full funding.
Incubator access guarantees funding in Israel.
Funding raising takes too long.
ISA actions. use Expertise Ireland as a common portal. Workshop on best practice for startups. Handbook on funding. Stanford program for CEOs. Working to promote entrepreneurship.
Be-Herd project.
Questions:
Copacetic 