Money Money Money – Govt thows money at VC funds

More money to foster home-grown companies. From the looks of it though it seems you have to be looking for a million before they want to know you. While great that they have the cash, surely there should be money for smaller investments too? What do the entrepreneurs think?

The government is investing €200 million in Irish venture capital firms to fund emerging entrepreneurs and kick-start the development of new companies.

Venture capitalists will be invited to apply for the government investment, which should help them attract backing from banks and pension funds. Ireland’s three main venture capital companies, ACT Venture Capital, Trinity Venture Capital and Delta Partners, are among those expected to raise funds.

The project is a follow-up to Enterprise Ireland’s seed and venture capital programme, which has committed €98 million to 15 funds since 2000.

9 Responses to “Money Money Money – Govt thows money at VC funds”

  1. This kind of bling funding will always be trickled out as using a money-for-jobs metric and is not helpful to start-ups that have to manage the employment prospects of their new hires in good faith.

  2. […] Several newspapers report on the plan for the government to provide 200 million euro to directly fund Irish VC companies. Damien Mulley asks what entpreneurs think of the idea. […]

  3. Personally speaking I’m much more interested in Angel Capital than Venture Capital and Joe’s Drumgoole’s comments (trackbacked above) pretty much sum up m own views on this news, particularly in his statemnt that, “nobody in the irish VC community is going to pay you 50-100k to develop your idea, investigate the market, learn about your customers etc. This is the gap that EI needs to fill with its 200m, not subsidising successful VCs with money over which it looses control the day after it is invested.”

    I was speaking with an Angel Investor (an American) at the Web2Ireland conference in Dublin two weeks ago and it was clear that we still have a large transition to make here in terms of achieving an angel investment culture, although it is beginning to happen….

  4. Walter says:

    My gut reaction to hearing this is WTF ?!!?
    I was under the impression that Irish VC firms already had plenty of money (otherwise they wouldn’t be in the business). Now EI wants to give the VC firms 200 million ? I just can’t believe this. Irish VC firms seem to have forgotten what the V in VC stands for (didn’t jerry kennelly buy out ACT’s 25% stake in Stockbyte for 1.2m – ACT must be kicking themselves).
    Enterprise Ireland – There are probably a lot of tech startups that could use that 200m – why not do your job, cut out the middleman and talk to and evaluate the entrepeneur’s directly.

  5. Fergus Burns says:

    I could write a small book on the Irish VC scene in relation to our work to date [some other day]

    Walter hits home some points re: the Venture element – Bernie’s point is very valid. Did you know that if you get funding from EI @ a 3 year plan for 20 hires and 5 million in revenue, they hold you to that before you get anymore funding.

    Most technology companies can only plan a quarter in advance, never mind 3 years.

    At the recent web2ireland conference it was hit home – too many VC/investment types in Ireland/Europe are “accountants” – very few have any operational experience, and thus you have a huge problem in terms of value add.

    We need to fix the bottom end of the ecosystem.

  6. […] James has a great post which follows up from a piece in the SBPost, and other commentaries from Joe, Damien, Bernie and Justin […]

  7. […] In an older post I was asking about angel investment in Ireland. Today’s report seems to address this although I have not read all the small print: Further develop networks of Business Angels in order to encourage investment by private individuals in seed and earlystage businesses. (pg5 of Exec Summary.) […]

  8. […] Compare that with the Irish VC investment scene [due to get €200m from the Govt] – which has ZERO web2.0 investments to date. […]

  9. Heather says:

    Hello,

    Thoes of you who would like to meet the internationally successful business angel Richard Farleigh will be interested to know he is giving a half day conference in the Four Seasons on March 29th 2008.

    In the mid 1990’s he semi-retired and has since operated as a “business angel” backing some very exciting early-stage companies, mostly in the United Kingdom where he also recently appeared in BBC’s Dragons Den.