1. Entrepreneurial Internships: This programme is designed to develop small scale projects with aspiring entrepreneurs to produce commercially focused applications in the web and mobile space. This investment programme is an avenue for individuals or small teams with links to a third level institution to pursue potential opportunities from idea to application in a supportive environment and among a set of peers. For more information about our Entrepreneurial Internship programme visit this page.
2. CTR Feasibility projects: We are investing in a programme to develop projects with established academics and companies that are potential collaborative translational research projects, but would benefit from upfront problem-solution and market validation. The focus of projects within the programme will be in the areas of health, education, entertainment and the environment. For more information about our CTR Feasibility programme visit this page.
3. Collaborative Translational Research projects: Having built a portfolio of collaborative translational research projects, the National Digital Research Centre is embarking on a second investment phase in further collaborative translational research. As such, the NDRC is seeking to facilitate further collaborations between established academics and industry partners to develop commercially-focused research projects in the application areas of health, education, entertainment and the environment.
In this specific call, the NDRC is particularly interested in receiving proposals for environmental technologies – specifically targeted at energy efficiency as distinct from green energy generation – in a digital context. We are not, however, excluding good ideas in other digital application areas. For more information about our Collaborative Translational Research programme visit this page.
To register and access online forms for all of these programmes visit this page.
Chris Horn was looking for information on technology company exits since 2000. I had some data and with the help of some twitter buddies I grabbed a bunch of others last night.
Some of the numbers are in Euros (very few) and some exits are undisclosed so we can say with some degree of certainty that the the total exit values are,
That sounds like a lot of money (well it used to until our developers and banks blew 90bn) but we need to factor in a few other things get a proper understanding of whether this represents a real return on investment.
How much was invested (we could probably total EI and IVCA figures to get this number)
How much employment was generated (this represents tax income to the exchequer and economic activity)
How many are still employing people in Ireland today
Only when we have this data will we understand the true meaning of the 1.6bn USD.
Incidentally most of the data was retrieved from the excellent Thomas Crosbie Holdings Archives. I recommend site specific searching of this archive use the google site directive. For example to find stuff on Iona,
Dylan Collins of Jolt Games crystallizes my views on what needs to be done in Ireland with startups in the Irish Independent today,
Collins argues passionately about why Ireland needs to be providing greater support for its young technology entrepreneurs. "If Ireland wants to achieve this knowledge economy it should be prepared to invest at low seed levels.
"If Enterprise Ireland was to make 200 or 300 grants available every year at €50,000 a pop for entrepreneurs to build an online product and go to market. For €50,000, you can get three or four guys in a room for three or four months and they will build a product and go to market. If we had 300 of these groups every year, you would create a digital ecosystem.
"In the US, groups like Y Combinator are funding businesses at low levels and, in Europe, The Founders Fund is doing this.
"There are venture capitalists in the US waiting to bet on young businesses. It’s remarkable this hasn’t happened in Ireland yet. We should be supporting our young right now, instead of scaring them to death.
"For €10m a year, you could have 200 companies a year and 5pc of them could emerge as Ireland’s answer to Microsoft or Nokia," says Collins.
Grainne Tallon, Apr 15 03:51 pm:Dublin Business Innovation Centre is running a Two Day Marketing Workshop specifically aimed at owner/managers of small enterprises like yours. The workshop will take place on 24th & 25th April 2009 in the Guinness Enterprise Centre, Taylor’s Lane, Dublin 8 (see Flyer attached).
WHO SHOULD ATTEND
Early stage Entrepreneurs with an existing or near completed Business Plan, seeking information on Marketing and Marketing Plans.
Entrepreneurs with an existing Business Plan, requiring Marketing expertise to complete or strengthen the Marketing section of their plan.
The subjects are both topical and necessary to empower you with the knowledge needed to manage your marketing programme more efficiently. The Programme will enable you to understand and implement the Marketing Plan. The interactive hands-on workshop will cover modules in Marketing: Market Research, Market Analysis, SWOT, Brand Building, Optimizing Performance. Each module will be based on interactive activities using a practical approach, with participants performing tasks to complete each module. Lunch included each day. Participants who complete the course will receive a rebate of €100 plus a copy of the Software used in this workshop.
To reserve your place please contact me in Dublin Business Innovation Centre on 6713111 or e-mail me at info@dbic.ie.
From the Linkedin Group IT Ireland Joanne Merrion announces a new EPP program from Dundalk IT.
IQ360’s Novation Enterprise Platform Programme 2009 Support for Start ups – Open for Applications
The Novation EPP is the Country’s Leading Enterprise Development Programme for those setting up or developing a technology business.
Based in the Regional Development Centre in DkIT the programme offers a comprehensive range of supports for entrepreneurs starting Knowledge Based, ICT, Renewable Energy and High Tech businesses.
The Enterprise Ireland eBusiness Unit and HPSU Department are running an eBusiness Masterclass in East Point on the morning of the 28th of April. Primarily aimed at client companies who operate in the online space, the Masterclass, entitled “Enabling eBusiness: Best Practice and Future Trends”, will feature presentations on international best practice from leading industry figures on the following topics: Web 2.0 and the law; online advertising; virtualisation/cloud computing; and online payments. The presentations will feature in-depth analysis of the current best practice in the topic areas, as well as outlining future trends and developments. For further details on the speakers, please see the attached flyer.
To register your interest in attending this free event, please send an email to ebusiness@enterprise-ireland.com, or alternatively contact your Development Advisor.
Dave Scanlon points out in a comment that this is only available to existing EI clients.
We are excited today to introduce the public beta of Amazon Elastic MapReduce, a web service that enables businesses, researchers, data analysts, and developers to easily and cost-effectively process vast amounts of data. It utilizes a hosted Hadoop framework running on the web-scale infrastructure of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) and Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3).
Using Amazon Elastic MapReduce, you can instantly provision as much or as little capacity as you like to perform data-intensive tasks for applications such as web indexing, data mining, log file analysis, machine learning, financial analysis, scientific simulation, and bioinformatics research. Amazon Elastic MapReduce lets you focus on crunching or analyzing your data without having to worry about time-consuming set-up, management or tuning of Hadoop clusters or the compute capacity upon which they sit.
Working with the service is easy: Develop your processing application using our samples or by building your own, upload your data to Amazon S3, use the AWS Management Console or APIs to specify the number and type of instances you want, and click "Create Job Flow." We do the rest, running Hadoop over the number of specified instances, providing progress monitoring, and delivering the output to Amazon S3.
We hope this new service will prove a powerful tool for your data processing needs. You can sign up and start using the service today at aws.amazon.com/elasticmapreduce.
As a technology company in Ireland you may be eligible to claim up to 25% of your R&D costs as a tax credit. Up to 2008 this credit could only be claimed against corporation tax that was due which meant for most startups it lay unclaimed or could only be accrued against (hopefully) future profits. The full details are outlined in a Revenue note, Revenue Guidelines for Research and Development Tax Credit.
However the rules have changed for tax credits claimed in 2009. From 2009 tax credits can be reclaimed in cash where the company is not paying corporation tax (i.e. because it has no profits).
The claim is made on the standard company tax filing form CT1. You cannot claim for money that has been granted by the state (e.g. EI) or county enterprise boards. Once the claims is made and is successful you are granted the rebate in tranches over several years so you won’t get it all at once. However it can be recognised on your balance sheet.
The definition of R&D that revenue applies is stricter than that of EI, specifically,
The Act requires research and development activities to be systematic, investigative or experimental in nature. It is expected that activities be to a planned logical sequence, generally to a recognised methodology, with detailed records being maintained. • Each project should be documented showing clearly why each major element is required, and how it fits into the research activity as a whole. To build on the results of testing in a systematic way requires the organised documentation of work undertaken by way of experimentation or investigation. • It is important for a company to maintain dated documents of the original scientific or technological goals of the activity, the progress of the work and how it has been carried out, and the conclusions. • Indicators or measures to be used to determine if the scientific or technological objectives of the research and development activity are met should be identified when forming the concepts for the research and development activity. These measures should also be documented at the early stages of the program. Failure to have such documentation may indicate the absence of a systematic, investigative or experimental approach. The following are indicative of the existence of a systematic process:
the work is carried out or led by trained or experienced personnel;
the work is conducted under a development protocol or under the direction of a project manager;
the work is documented;
the process by which the work is performed is documented.
So make sure you make your claim for 2008 and 2009. 2008 is accrued and 2009 will be paid in cash if you qualify.
