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Review 2019

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TechIreland is Ireland’s only database tracking product innovation across the island. A unique platform that offers free access to over 3,500 profiles of startups, scaleups, MNCs, investors and innovation hubs including accelerators, incubators, research centers, coworking facilities and innovation communities.

We promote and connect the innovation community at home and internationally. As a not-for-profit, TechIreland largely relies on support from our members and community drivers like yourself.

TechIreland has become a popular destination to explore innovative Irish businesses. In the first 11 months of 2019, we recorded over

61,000 first-time visitors to the website 75% increase from 2018.

We publish

• Blogs (150% increase in readership YoY)

• Coffee Table Book (3,500+ copies sold)

• Funding Reviews (Twice a year; the most comprehensive funding report covering data on equity capital, debt financing, grant support, prize monies, crowdfunding among others)

• Interactive Maps (300% YoY increase in views)

• Infographics (200% YoY increase in views)

• Podcasts (250% YoY increase in listenership)

Some Numbers • 13,000+ subscribers to our mailer and campaign

updates

• 6,000+ blog subscribers - entrepreneurs, investors, startup champions and ecosystems drivers

• 13 Sectors: Agri/Food, Consumer/eCommerce, CleanTech, EdTech, Enterprise Software, Entertainment/Sports, FinTech, Health/Med, IndustrialTech, Media/Ad, Security, Tele and Travel

• 4 Disruptive Tech Sectors: Artificial Intelligence, Augmented/Virtual Reality, Blockchain, and IoT

A Cluster Map of Irish SaaS Businesses

YoY - year on year 2018 to 2019

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2019 Accomplishments (in no order of priority)

� Published yearly coffee table book - Innovation Nation - a 2018 round up

� Published half year 2019 funding review - an extensive funding report about Irish tech funding

� Tracked and promoted the cause for Female Founder Funding, published our €100M Campaign Review.

� Predictive analysis in identifying high-growth businesses based on 6 years’ growth indicators

� Supporting data about AI businesses for the National AI Action Plan public consultation by DBEI

� Startup ecosystem benchmarking for Enterprise Ireland

� Mapping Ireland’s serial entrepreneur landscape; shortlisted 100+ serial entrepreneurs

� Tracking Northern Irish companies and innovation hubs as part of TechIreland open data platform

� Recruiting NI advisors for cross-border innovation and collaboration on the island

� Benchmarking popular startup program participants with overall population of companies

� Scouting specialised businesses with deep tech capabilities and linking them with global MNCs

� Identifying companies offering cloud based services and compiling data about their operations

� Shortlisting potential businesses for Series A+ funding rounds

� Supporting data for a potential new seed to Series A fund in Ireland

Initiatives & Campaigns TechIreland, with the support of our sponsors, drives several sectoral and topical campaigns throughout the year. They are packed with content and expert insights. E.g, our €100M Female Founder Funding Review was published earlier this year, the IrishSaaS campaign promoted Ireland as a great SaaS destination. The GrowRevenue campaign focused on helping Irish businesses with sales insights and best practices. Our campaigns are backed by data and by inputs from experts and thought leaders. TechIreland is one place where all sectors and technology domains can be promoted among those who really matter - Irish innovation enthusiasts.

TechIreland & Scale IrelandWe work closely with Scale Ireland, the policy body that aims to secure a policy environment that empowers Ireland’s innovation-driven enterprises to succeed and scale. Good policy is dependent on clear and objective data. TechIreland is delighted to be able to provide such data for policy making.

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For curated data or introductions email: research@techireland.org

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In 2020 The following is a line up of initiatives and campaigns planned for the first half of 2020, while several others are being discussed. We seek your advice and active participation throughout the year.

� PowerOfWhere - geo-location mapping to depict strategic applications for businesses

� Northern Irish innovation ecosystem - increasing collaboration and partnership

� GreenWarriors on TechIreland - supporting the Irish Tech Goes Carbon Neutral campaign

� Innovation Island, coffee table book, due for St. Patrick’s Day

� WhatCloud - awareness about the right cloud services provider for distinct business needs

� TalentTech - attracting and retaining tech talent in Ireland

� International Markets - Insights from 5 international experts

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3,500 copies of our coffee table book sold

5,500+ social media followers

6,000+ blog subscribers

6,000+ website visits p.m.

10,000+ mailer subscribers

As a TechIreland Supporter, you are entitled to:

1. Your brandIng on

• TechIreland Supporters Page

• Yearly coffee table book ‘Innovation Island’ - supporters page

2. CampaIgn partnershIp

• Strategically associate your brand with a powerful cause, initiative, sector or region

• Co-brand one of our campaigns in 2020, we’re open to your campaign ideas!

• Branding on all TechIreland campaign content in 2020 - mailer, blog, infographic, social media, podcast(s), video(s) and any offers for the tech community

3. promotIon & outreaCh

• TechIreland will blog on interesting blog topic of your choice [that generally supports the Irish tech and startup community], including your ‘‘quotes’’

• An email to all the TechIreland members and followers about your most special initiative or offering to the tech community

• Promote your events, updates and initiatives on our social media throughout the year

4. ComplImentary Copy of our coffee table book - Innovation Island

5. daTa (GDPR compliant requests)

• One-on-one calls with TechIreland on how our data might be useful for your business.

• Two data downloads (we recommend a min. 6-month gap between your requests)

• One bespoke report/spreadsheet (data organised in ready to present format)

• Comprehensive reports on the funding of Irish startups and scaleups. Half-year and annual reports in spreadsheet format (Companies and their data for your analysis)

6. last but not least

TechIreland supporters are strengthening the tech and start-up community in Ireland. The TechIreland offer of a free-to-access database of the Irish startup ecosystem is unique. As a not-for-profit organisation, we could not exist without your generous support.

We will continue to work hard to preserve, build upon and responsibly use our data to promote Irish innovation. Looking forward to a stronger collaboration with you in 2020.

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The Irish Tech and Startup Sector in 2019Brian Caulfield is a Director of TechIreland. He is a serial technology entrepreneur turned venture capital investor. He is a venture partner with Draper Esprit, and a keen observer of the Irish tech and startup ecosystem. How is the sector doing overall?

Investment numbers and performance for the first half of the year was good - €437 million raised by over 100 companies - that’s pretty solid. It included some reasonably large rounds and showed a better spread than

the same period last year. Also from a regional perspective. TechIreland registered over 350 new tech companies on the database bringing it to 2,500 companies that we’re now

tracking, that’s a pretty good indication of the health of the sector. And with the help of InterTradeIreland we added substantial numbers of Northern Ireland tech businesses to the database and a lot of new regionally-based companies as a result of an outreach to the LEOs.

In terms of sectors and technologies, we had lots of new AI, AR/VR, Data analytics, Food-tech. Blockchain businesses seems to be down this year.

That’s not surprising. We saw significant reverses in the value of virtually all of the major crypto currencies and a general scepticism about crypto currency, which has fed into the broader scepticism of blockchain as a technology platform. Personally, I think that’s probably over-played. While really strong use cases have yet to emerge, I’d be long on blockchain in terms of some very interesting potential applications, and short on crypto currency.

This year, over €50million into Irish AI businesses, €70million into Internet of Things (IoT)

AI and IoT are two hot trends at the moment. Unfortunately, whenever a tech trend like this emerges companies tend to jump on the bandwagon, with claims of AI when perhaps they are really fairly standard enterprise technology companies with a very small amount of AI, if any. Nevertheless, I am long on AI technology, where some fundamental technologies are emerging.

Significant acquisitions this year

There were a couple of very large transactions like Prepaid Financial Services, an absolutely incredible outcome for the founders who built that business, kind of under-the-radar. And yet again we have seen how long it takes. Corvil which was founded in 2000 was acquired. Another 19-year-old overnight success story! Another interesting acquisition was that of 3D4Medical

by Elsevier. That probably reflects the increasing importance of distribution for business success. 3D4Medical has an absolutely fantastic piece of technology, their products are things of beauty, but they have to get into

the educational space. Having a great product, is “table stakes”, you also have to get your product to market.

There’s evidence of another positive trend; Irish companies are growing by acquisition. AMCS, in Limerick, have been effectively executing a roll-up strategy. They’ve made acquisitions this year in both Germany and the United States and that’s. A slightly different one was the acquisition of Firmwave by Taoglas - one of the rare occasions where one Irish company has acquired another. We need more of these in Ireland - generating scale by putting businesses that are complementary together. Definitely an interesting trend.

Irish tech businesses and Brexit.

TechIreland recently surveyed successful Irish software businesses, many didn’t think Brexit will affect them. The great problem with Brexit still is that nobody really knows what form it’s going to take and it’s difficult to prepare for something that is so ill-defined. While it’s likely that the UK may come to some form of frictionless trade agreement in relation to goods, services may well be subject to some form of tariff regime. I’m surprised that people are not more worried, despite the best efforts of Enterprise Ireland and InterTradeIreland who have put a lot into educating the manufacturing and food industry.

€437 million raised by over 100 companies

Another 19-year-old overnight success story!

teChIreland added over 350 new tech companies on the database brIngIng It to 2,500 companies thIs year.

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Multinational Investments

Some great developments, and not just in Dublin. Security Risk Advisors in Kilkenny, ARTeSYN Biosolutions in Waterford, the big WuXi vaccines plant in Dundalk - a pretty good regional spread albeit probably focused on the larger, rather than the smaller towns. It is also

encouraging to see Huawei opening their R&D center in Dublin - doing research in AI, internet sentiment analysis and human computer interaction. I couldn’t fail to mention Intel’s decision for an additional

fab plant in Leixlip – a total investment of €8 billion. An absolutely enormous investment, and one that’s incredibly sticky. When you build a semiconductor fab plant, you’re there for the long haul. It’s important for us to have these really sticky foreign direct investments. And definitely very, very positive from an FDI perspective.

TechIreland support for Scale Ireland

For many years the start-up and scale up sector has found it difficult to interact with government. Understandably, the start-up sector is very fragmented. We mentioned the 2,500 companies in the TechIreland

database. It’s difficult to create a coherent voice for those companies, especially as so many of them are small, many of them may not be around next year, and they are constantly changing - we’ve got 350 new ones this year alone. Scale Ireland is particularly keen to

ensure that policy recommendations are evidence based and we use the TechIreland database of innovation to establish baselines and trends to form policy recommendations.

This year also saw a broadening of the investor base, with more international investors.

Capital markets are becoming more globalised, especially for later-stage deals where if you’re raising more than, say €10 million, you can go to the global capital markets. We need to be careful however. Many of the large American funds see Europe as a price arbitrage opportunity where bargains are to be had. From a European perspective, we really need to build a strong local capital market, that’s capable of providing large amounts of capital, hundreds of €millions, to European businesses to enable them to scale up, rather than relying on the US global capital to always fill that gap. It’s great to see Greylock, and Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia making Irish investments in the past year. The businesses that they’ve invested in are incredibly interesting businesses. Both Utmost and Evervault also provide an interesting contrast; on one hand with EverVault, you have 19-year-old Shane Curran, on the other hand with Utmost you have Annrai O’Toole and Paddy Benson, two veterans like myself.

Key asks for the Irish startup and tech sector as we head into the Roaring Twenties?

The two biggest problems remain access to talent and access to capital. If I had to pick just two things. It would be significant further reform of the KEEP share option scheme and further improvements to the EIIS investment scheme. I’d also like to see more in terms of developing the European ecosystem. For example, one simple thing would be a pan European share options structure that would operate across all the EU countries. I’d also like to see more in terms of facilitating the creation of large pan European funds to deliver those really big capital injections that are needed to scale up European businesses.

In conversation with John O’Dea December 2019

2,500 companies in the TechIreland database

fab plant in Leixlip – a total investment of €8 billion

Thanks to our

community of Supporters

Foundation partners

www.TechIreland.org