Start-up Gathering to celebrate start-ups over five days across five cities

30 Jan 2015

Emerging start-up sectors in Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Galway and Waterford will be celebrated at Ireland’s first Start-up Gathering, which will take place over five days in October.

The current start-up frenzy in Ireland is unprecedented and the gathering – the brainchild of Start-up Ireland – will serve start-ups in five key industries including ICT, medical devices, bio-pharma, agri-food and business services.

News of the Start-up Gathering comes on the heels of new measures in the Irish Government’s Action Plan for Jobs which includes plans to deliver a SURE tax incentive to provide funding for people starting businesses.

Over 50 events attended by at least 15,000 members of the public and international visitors will take place between 5 October and 10 October.

Start-up Ireland chief executive Eoin Costello said the purpose of the Start-up Gathering is to highlight resources available to people who may wish to start their own businesses, attract international start-ups to make Ireland a base and ultimately strengthen Ireland’s talent base and entrepreneurial networks.

Among the events planned are hackers and founders team building events, diaspora networking e vents, entrepreneur career fairs and a national ‘Startup Demo Day’ where entrepreneurs can pitch to top accelerators, investors, mentors and corporates, both national and international.

Start me up

The Start-up Gathering will kick off with an annual conference for Ireland’s start-up sector and will end with a state dinner on the theme of ‘Why invest in Ireland’s start-up sector’ hosted by the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise & Innovation Richard Bruton TD.

Invitees will be from strategic target areas such as venture funding, corporate venturing, corporate backed accelerators and intern programme placement managers from around the world.

“The Start-up Gathering is an ambitious project which at its heart is ‘of the start-up sector, by the start-up sector and for the start-up sector,” Costello said.

“Building on the relationships and networks created by Ireland’s entrepreneur, university, corporate and state agency sectors, we plan to leverage these national and international networks to coordinate andpromote The Start-up Gathering with support from relevant state agencies. It will be a true public/private partnership.”

Start-up image via Shutterstock

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

editorial@siliconrepublic.com