Keith Jordan, founder and chief executive of iTagged, a next-generation augmented reality platform, is a recent participant in the EI programme. We soon wised up, but it probably cost us six months,” said McGuire. It can take a while for you to realise that they aren’t up to it. With so many vacancies for engineers, it’s easy for them to get roles. There are a lot of people out here who know enough to get themselves jobs, but aren’t that good at doing them. “It took us a while to get our team right. Even with financing in place, he admits there’s always something new to learn. It took a few years and many setbacks to find success. I realised at some stage that the global aspirations I had required millions rather than a few hundred thousand, which meant leaving Ireland.” “Raising finance for sport, especially golf, has been a difficult journey. Through this contact he met others who let him borrow a bed or a sofa on occasion for more than a year while he built up contacts and fine-tuned his product. McGuire ended up sleeping on a stranger’s couch after he struck up a conversation with a fellow Irishman while waiting to collect his bags on his first evening in the city. I had to learn all that as I went along, which in hindsight probably wasn’t that wise.” Stranger’s couch
“People need to come here with some financial acumen because you’re talking to sophisticated investors. “ I did it the hard way when I came over here because I was fairly clueless about the dynamics of seed investment and angel investors and so on, and had no network here initially,” he said. Operating out of a shared incubator space on Geary Street in the city’s financial district, it has raised over $15 million and generated over $10 million in revenues. He wishes he could have availed of programmes such as Access Silicon Valley.īased in San Francisco and with offices in four other US locations, his company is well on the way to success. He’s the first to agree that making it in the US isn’t easy. It's used by US president Barack Obama and backed by heavyweight investors. One of those earlier entrepreneurs who admits to finding success through trial, error and persistence is John McGuire, founder of Active Mind Technology and the creator of Game Golf, a wearable shot tracking device for golfers. “We are trying to get companies exposed to as much information as we can and as early as possible in the hope they don’t make the same mistakes that earlier entrepreneurs did,” said Boswell. Two years ago Enterprise Ireland launched Access Silicon Valley, a programme designed to assist Irish technology companies targeting the Bay Area. “There are also plenty of people with their heads down working really hard for whom putting their name out and about publicly isn’t necessarily the right decision.” “There’s a tendency to focus on the same three or four companies, but there are other firms that may not have secured a major investment, but are winning customers and are succeeding. "We've got about 50 Irish companies active in the market – either coming back and forth or who are with operations here – and these range from early-stage start-ups to companies such as Gridstore, which has been around for quite a while. It’s a lot more complex than is often reported. “I don’t like to be critical of the Irish media, but it feels like there’s been a bit of a sales job going on in terms of what really happens out here. The focus on a few highly successful Irish start-ups has meant most people don’t realise how difficult it can be to make it in the US, she added. Some come to realise that Silicon Valley isn’t right for them,” she said. Firms that have test-marketed their products and have a concept born in Europe can find that it’s a much bigger and more segmented market here than they anticipated. The companies operating in this market are larger than anywhere else in the world in terms of valuations, customer numbers and so on. “It is a lot harder and more competitive than people imagine.
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