Republic ranks among the best for start-ups but Dublin has work to do

The Republic of Ireland has climbed two places to 14th in a ranking of the best 100 countries for start-ups. However, Dublin has slipped three places to 44th in the city sub-index ,with the report authors arguing that there is an uphill struggle to get the city into the top 30.

The rankings were compiled by StartupBlink using algorithms that analyse thousands of data points on early-stage companies, accelerators and co-working spaces to rank 1,000 cities and 100 countries in terms of their start-up ecosystems.

The Swiss-Israeli company, which has developed an online global start-up map, also uses data collated by research platforms such as Crunchbase and SimilarWeb.

Its study shows that Cork has jumped 35 places since the last rankings were published in 2017 and is now in 199th place overall. However, Galway has declined 83 places to 227. Belfast is in 257th sport, down 49 places, while Limerick has fallen from 235th to 444th place.

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Waterford city and Dundalk are also included in the rankings, with the former a new entry at 775 and the latter slipping 135 places to 834th spot.

The US is the best ranked country for start-ups overall with six cities ranked in the top 10, including San Francisco and New York, which take the top two spots.

The UK comes in second place, with London ranked the third best city in the world for fledgling companies.

Canada, Israel and Australia round out the top five countries for start-ups, while Los Angeles, Boston, Tel Aviv, Berlin, Chicago, Seattle and Moscow join San Francisco, New York and London as the leading cities.

Bolster support

The authors said the State should try to bolster support for start-ups in cities outside of Dublin if it wanted to climb up the country rankings.

"The main problem is very clear. You don't have a top-25 city, so although Dublin is doing okay it is not an engine in the style of Tel Aviv, Berlin or London," said Eli David, chief executive of StartupBlink. "The bottom line is there is a lot of potential but slow growth and an inability to create a real global hub in Ireland."

Late last month Avolon founder and chief executive Dómhnal Slattery said the Republic was uniquely placed to be a global start-up leader, but added that it faced a number of challenges in becoming one.

Mr Slattery called for the Government to be more discriminate in terms of the companies that currently received State funding, and said there was a need to “radically re-engineer the tax code” for entrepreneurs.