EirePreneur
Doing microbusiness in Ireland.
January 03, 2006
December 30, 2005
Riding the rollercoaster of a business startup
"10 months into my business and I am finding it very hard", says a member of Askaboutmoney, which leads into an interesting discussion about the importance of networking and personal face-to-face relationships in business. The topic also touches on unfair competition and the daily ups and downs of startup life. Together with Boards.ie, Askaboutmoney should be a daily scan for any Irish entrepreneur.
November 11, 2005
The Business Experiment gets new life
I remember The Business Experiment getting alot of publicity a few months back but I never kept up with it and I guess I thought it was dead. Business Pundit admits it nearly did expire but has now been rescued by an enthusiastic young entrepreneur called Sean Clauson. Can the wisdom of crowds build a viable business?
November 08, 2005
Entrepreneur howto for the techy
Its good to see another Irish startup blogger - Conall O'Brien - sharing his experiences and lessons learned. One to keep an eye on...
November 07, 2005
Business competitions - are they good or bad?
On yesterday's Sunday Times two Irish business people explained how winning business competitions can be hugely beneficial, while at the same time Ed Byrne warned about the pitfalls of entering some such competitions.
October 27, 2005
You must lead, not follow
Donagh Kiernan of Maidsfield Business Development in Cork advises "Whatever business you decide to be in, strive to be the leader." Of course we all know that leaders can sometimes get burned and see a fast follower take all the spoils but nevertheless Donagh is right - you must still strive to be better than the rest.
We learned our own lesson a year ago when one of our competitors surprised us by launching a few innovative new services in our market. Our thunder has suddenly been stolen and we're still fighting to get it back. But we won't stop until we're back in front...
October 18, 2005
PurePlay - an Irish startup story
I love coming across blogs for Irish startups and particularly ones with similar stories to our own. Keith Bohanna and Fintan Kelly are based in Kilkenny, Ireland and bootstrapping a new web sevices business.
"... here I am. Again. One of two partners in a start-up which is technology based and neither of us is a coder. What can you do?! Our partnership works very well and is one that we are both comfortable with. Do we not do anything and wait for the right techie to come along?"
That's dejavu for me! It's very similar to the situation my business partner and I found ourselves in some years back (and are still in). Yes, we both had engineering degrees but neither of us were coders. We can do basic HTML and graphics aswell as much other front end stuff but don't ask us to look behind the bonnet.
So we had to make a number of interesting decisions along the way, including the choice of an outsourced software platform to power much of our business. We're very happy with the way things worked out and haven't yet hired a full time programmer. It'll be very interesting to observe the evolution of Keith and Fintan's business.
October 06, 2005
Web 2.0 in Ireland (and San Francisco)
Fergus Burns of Donegal based Nooked reports from San Francisco where he`s attending the Web2.0 conference with other businesses from the Irish north-west. Interestingly they have created a new blog - called Web 2.0 in Ireland - which is sponsored by Enterprise Ireland. I don`t know if Fergus has applied more of the carrot or the stick but its great to see the state agency grasping the importance of Web 2.0 (regardless of how much that jargon is starting to annoy some!).
October 05, 2005
Are you a leader or not?
Tony Morgan gives you 10 ways to know when you're not a leader. My favourite? "Your dreams are so small, people think they can be achieved."
October 04, 2005
Ding-a-ling.... it's Ning!
In June I wrote about Ireland ex-pat Diego Doval's stealth start-up 24 Hour Laundry which have been building up alot of expectation, not least because of having one Marc Andreessen onboard. Well now Diego has just announced Ning which, if it lives up to its billing, is going to blow the socks of most internet pundits.
Why? Because it claims to allow you to build your own version of Craigslist, Match, Flickr, Facebook, del.icio.us and Zagat,.... for starters! Or, as the tagline states, its a playground for building and using social applications. Social apps are web applications that enable anyone to match, transact, and communicate with other people.
Did these guys license "shock and awe" tactics from the Bush adminstration?
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