Room for an Irish Techcrunch?

When Alan O'Rourke posted a teaser for Toddle, hot on the heels of the Tablane launch, it occured to me that we might need an Irish version of TechCrunch to keep on top off all the exciting stuff that's happening in the internet startup scene in this country.

Mike Arrington seems to have his hands full monitoring developments in Silicon Valley so if he doesn't mind I might try adapting his model to this blog for the odd analysis of internet startups and software launches in Ireland.

Of course, if I don't know about it I can't blog it so please email me at EirePreneur at gmail dot com with any heads-up. It would also help if you could answer as many of these questions as possible -

Who: are the people behind this company? Who are your customers?
What: is this business about? What does this product/service do? What's the USP?
When: was or will it be launched?
Where: are you based in Ireland? Do you have international offices?
Why: does the market need this product/service?

After getting those basic facts out of the way I may wish to engage in an asynchronous email interview with some of the founders so contact details would be appreciated.

Comments

[Alan O'Rourke]

Interesting idea. Do you think there would be enough happening/updates to keep it interesting?

[James Corbett]

That's why I specified "the odd analysis" Alan ;-)

You're right, there wouldn't be enough happening for a dedicated blog but perhaps there would be for one entry or more per week on this blog. Maybe there's more happening out there than we realize?

[James Corbett]

BTW, Mike a large % of Mike's posts are about updates or news relating to products he has already covered so that could be replicated here too.

[Julian Ellison]

My hunch is that there is indeed more happening than one would think. I myself am involved in three ventures, of which Tablane is the first to put its head above the parapet.

There is no real angel investor culture for tech companies in Ireland at present, despite all the cash swilling about the economy and the advantageous tax frameworks for such businesses. (Or if there is, 'Hello, we've over here!)

Anything that brings cohesion to these disparate initiatives will help towards the (long term) development of such a culture since it is likely to become a reference point for wider media interest both at home and abroad. Then again, what's to stop Eirepreneur being this reference point?

[James Corbett]

Interesting points Julian - and I'd have to agree with you. Emmet Connolly and myself are currently working on that 'Irish version of TechCrunch' and I was wondering if you'd mind being the first to be profiled? Actually I've already written up half a review :-)

[Damien Mulley]

Sounds like a good idea. One would think that all these new indigenous companies in Ireland would love this kind of attention and those that are encouraging them such as Enterprise Ireland or whoever they are would be feverishly signing them up.

[keith bohanna]

Go Julian!!

A small bit early for us to give the sort of detail you are looking for James - however as soon as it becomes appropriate I will send the answers to your questions onto you.

And adding a "business model" question - even with high-level responses - would be good.

thanks for the initiative

keith

[TechCrunch]

I love the idea! Let me know when it launches.

[James Corbett]

Thanks Mike, that's appreciated. Keith, great suggestion - 'business model' has been added to the list.

[Alan O'Rourke]

I hereby endorse this product and/or service.
Seriously though great idea. Loads more going on then i realised.

[Peter Cooper]

Wouldn't the UK & Ireland make more sense? You'll run out of (notable) Irish startups pretty quickly. You'd run out of UK ones too, of course, but it'd triple the pool at least?

[James Corbett]

Well I take you point Peter but its not about volume - we're not aiming to post a few times per day or even everyday. We just want a place to document and appraise new and updated web services coming out of Ireland. The net is all about niches and this is a niche within a niche but my blog has always been focused on the niche of entrepreneurship within Ireland so I think it makes sense for me to stay within that field. I'm sure there are other bloggers more qualified to do an British version of TechCrunch and look forward to adding it to my RSS aggregator :)

[TechCrunch]

I think I'm happy to create a techcrunch subdomain for this and link interesting stuff on techcrunch.com. Let's discuss.

[Fergus Burns]

I think the sub-domain idea on techcrunch is brillant - given the awesome job that Mike, Keith have done in generating a large audience - it can only be good news for Irish companies.

Peter - i guess a uk.techcrunch.com would work as well.

[Ed Byrne]

I know I'd love to find out more about what's going on in Ireland, webtech wise. And putting it on Techcrunch would provide great promotion for the Irish businesses covered.