Eoin Costello, co-founder of Startup Ireland. Image via Luke Maxwell
It’s going to be a busy week for start-ups next October following the official launch of this year’s Startup Gathering, which will take place across Ireland, with more than 300 events due to take place over five days.
With plans to make Ireland a global start-up hub by the year 2020, the Startup Gathering is one of the biggest events of the calendar, taking place between 5-10 October in Dublin, Waterford, Cork, Limerick and Galway.
With more than 300 events taking place across the country, it will be one of the largest events of its kind in the world, with the intention of promoting entrepreneurship and the development of regional start-up hubs.
It is also intended to be a showcase to highlight Ireland’s start-up sector to global entrepreneurs, investors and R&D teams.
At the launch today (8 September) attended by Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation Richard Bruton and Minister of State for Business and Employment Ged Nash, it was also confirmed that there will be additional events taking place in the north-east and north-west of the country.
One of the main events to take place across the five cities will be the open forum conference event, which invites start-ups to come together to discuss the big ideas that will turn their location into a start-up hub.
We need more entrepreneurs
These sessions will be facilitated by Oscar Ramirez of Start-up Commons Global, which specialises in online solutions for governments to manage, measure and monitor start-up ecosystems.
Another major event to be held will be the ChallengeUP programme, which will see 12 EMEA start-ups — whittled down from 300 — to be a part of an incubation programme supported by Intel, Cisco and Deutsche Telekom.
Speaking at the launch of the Startup Gathering, Minister Bruton said: “As I have said before, we have great entrepreneurs in Ireland, we just don’t have enough of them. Two-thirds of all new jobs across the economy are created by start-ups – that’s why it is so crucial that we get our policies on entrepreneurship right.
He continued, “We have put in place a start-up plan aiming to create almost 100,000 extra jobs from start-ups over the coming years, and we have created new mentoring supports, new incubation spaces, new tax measures and a new competition to find Ireland’s best young entrepreneur.”
