The way to San José

NET RESULTS:A recent Silicon Valley newspaper report proclaims that Ireland has 'arrived', having reinvented itself as a high-tech research and development centre

APRIL HAS been a good month for Ireland in Silicon Valley. Better than the end of last year, anyway.

Towards the end of 2007, the Valley's main newspaper, the San José Mercury News, ran a long story about the likely global locations for the next Silicon Valleys. Israel, China and India all got a look in. Ireland did not.

At the time, that frustrated some of the Irish technology industry executives I spoke to last week in Sunnyvale, one of the core Valley cities strung along the south end of San Francisco Bay. But they are feeling pretty chipper now.

One Sunday in early April, the entire top half of the front page of the Mercury News business and technology section was devoted to a huge colour picture of Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment Micheál Martin sitting at a table fronted by miniature Irish and American flags.

Most of the bottom half of the page was filled with a glowing story about the Republic and the growing business ties between it and Silicon Valley, headlined "Ireland Arrives".

Irish eyes must have been smiling in the Palo Alto offices of Enterprise Ireland and IDA Ireland at a paragraph like this: "No longer a sleepy European backwater, Ireland has reinvented itself as a high-tech research and product-development centre with a growing number of connections in Silicon Valley."

Some of the statistics offered on the overall US-Irish business relationship were surprising.

I knew that about 100,000 people in Ireland are employed by US multinationals.

But I had no idea that a number close to that - 80,000 - indicates the number of Americans employed by the 200 Irish companies in the US.

I was also surprised to read that 20 US businesses were acquired by Irish companies last year. And that 47 Irish businesses opened in the US in 2007. And that 30 Irish companies in Silicon Valley employ about 500 people. The value of Irish exports to the US was $1.4 billion (€877 million) in 2006.

These are all numbers that would have been hard to imagine 15 years ago.

On the other hand, an exaggerated picture is offered of Ireland's hardware and software strength. The figure of $400 million is offered for the "amount of hardware and software exports from Ireland".

Well, yes, but . . . The natural assumption for anyone not familiar with the real situation is always that this means an incredible amount of software is developed in Ireland.

But as many people in Ireland know, the reality is that, due to the beneficial tax structure, lots of software developed elsewhere is packaged and exported from Ireland.

Some of that software is localised for international markets from Ireland, but a relatively small amount is actually developed here. So an impressive figure on paper translates to little knowledge-economy value, except as a somewhat deceptive marketing tool.

Nonetheless, it's clear that Ireland has a growing profile in the Valley as a small country that is producing companies worth keeping an eye on.

Meanwhile, the Valley goes on producing plenty of companies on its own and in the current downturn - which absolutely no one in the Valley will call a recession - the region is mopping up the venture capital investments that the rest of the US is losing out on.

Figures just out for the last quarter indicate that, while overall venture capital investment across the US was down 7 per cent, in the San Francisco Bay area it was up 10 per cent. A total of $2.56 billion went into 213 deals in the Valley in the last quarter alone.

That's a lot of dosh - almost a third again of that figure for the entire 2006 value of Irish exports to the US.

But then, it's less than Google co-founder Sergey Brin made in a single day last week, when the value of his shares in the company surged 19.99 per cent last Thursday following Google's unexpectedly good results.

Yes, you read that right: in the breathtaking world of Valley values, one man made (at least on paper but, of course, Google shares have been higher) $2,745,777,723.45 in a single day.

Brin's co-founder Larry Page must have been seriously miffed, as he only managed to scrape by with $2,449,103,977.95 on the same day.

All that activity left Google with a market value of $169 billion by Friday, extraordinary stuff for a company that couldn't initially get any venture funding, even in the Valley.

Blog:  www.techno-culture.com