IRISH TECHNOLOGY start-ups need to develop global ambitions if they are to attract overseas investors, a panel of Silicon Valley investors and entrepreneurs claimed yesterday.
"Some of the ideas are great," said Richard Moran, a partner with Venrock Ventures, the venture capital firm founded by the Rockefeller family. "No-one convinced me they could be great."
The US delegation has been meeting local start-ups over the last two days at an event organised by the Irish Technology Leaders Group (ITLG), a Silicon Valley-based group of senior Irish and Irish-American technology executives. Twelve firms pitched to the investors, some of whom spoke at a forum in Dublin yesterday.
Mr Moran said that for US investors with large funds "size matters". "A company growing from $1 million in revenues to $8 million might be great but I want it to grow to $800 million," said Mr Moran.
Frazer McKimm, chief executive and founder of DHS, a maker of automotive technology which recently raised €500,000 in funding countered that, because Irish venture capitalists generally make smaller investments than their US or European counterparts, entrepreneurs were scaling their ambitions back to match.
Seán Cunningham from Intel Capital, which has made investments in a number of Irish firms including current investments Adaptive Mobile and Powervation, said in the current environment firms seeking funding had to have a "must-have" product rather than a "nice to have" one.
However, Conrad Burke, the Irish founder and chief executive of Silicon Valley-based solar energy start-up Innovalight said the funding environment was not as bad as people think.
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