2,000-job plan to make Dublin Europe’s #1 ‘Tech Start-up City’

2 Aug 2013

Some 2,000 jobs and an economic impact of €200m – that’s the ambition behind a new project spearheaded by Dublin Chamber of Commerce and Dublin City Council aimed at making Dublin the #1 Tech Start-up City in Europe.

A report that has come out of a project called “Activating Dublin” aimed at generating growth and employment in the Dublin region has found that Dublin is already ahead of many European cities.

The #bestplacetostart report found that Dublin was home to a thriving startup ecosystem that has the potential to grow even further. Amongst the strengths highlighted in the report were that three of Europe’s top eight start-up accelerators were in Dublin.

In the US, companies less than five years old created 44 million jobs over the last three decades and accounted for all net new jobs created in the U.S. over that period. In 2007, alone 8m of the 12m new jobs created were from young firms. Scaling to Ireland’s population for that same period would be equivalent to creating 630,000 jobs.

The report identifies a number of further actions that key stakeholders should take to achieve their objective. One of the first identified is coordinating the marketing and promotion efforts in attracting tech companies to Dublin.

At the moment this is being done, but without strong coordination this can lead to confusing messaging internationally. Another key step is helping start-ups find the services they need so they can focus on starting & growing their businesses (e.g. office space, legal, accounting).

The route is simple: be open for business

The report also suggests that the potential to be an international hub for tech startups lies in making it easier for international entrepreneurs to locate in Dublin, citing research from Silicon Valley that immigrants founded 52.4pc of the start-ups from 1995 to 2005.

“The report confirms the huge potential in the tech start-up community,” said John Moran, Secretary General of the Department of Finance and chair of the group.

“The energy and excitement of the people working in this sector is unrivalled internationally. The key is not to try to take control from them. The objective of this report is to build upon these strengths and develop a supportive strategy in place to make sure they can focus on developing their ideas, grow their business and create jobs,” Moran said.

Liffey image via Shutterstock

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com