The Startup Gathering

In 2015 Startup Ireland, with the assistance of many other organisations, ran the Startup Gathering, a weeklong series of approx. 400 Startup related events spread across many Irish towns and cities. This was driven by a small and exceptionally hard working salaried team, the voluntary board of Startup Ireland and a huge number of other volunteers and was facilitated by many other individuals and organisations. A key feature of the gathering was a series of structured break-out sessions where attendees gathered in groups to discuss the improvements needed in Ireland’s startup ecosystem.

Consultation and Collation

In 2016, Meadow Jackson, a Startup Ireland research associate collated the ideas for the above break out sessions and ideas from various other sources including: reports such as the 2014 “Report of the Entrepreneurship Forum”; a budget submission on startup issues which had been prepared by Startup Ireland following a public consultation exercise and the manifestos of other countries, to create a menu of possible items to include in the Manifesto

Lorcan O’Sullivan, working on a voluntary basis, used this menu in a series of one to-one consultations with entrepreneurs, investors and start up support organisations to create a draft manifesto.

This draft was published online in November 2016 and a campaign of social media and direct contact was used to seek feedback on it from the Startup community. Lorcan modified this draft in light of the feedback to create the final version of the manifesto.

Ireland’s first ever Startup Manifesto

Ireland's first ever Startup Manifesto. It was a statement of the improvements needed in the start-up/business environment in a country (or region) to maximise the number and growth rates of innovative start-ups, that start, scale and eventually succeed on global markets. Following a public consultation period, we had collated the extensive feedback from entrepreneurs and business thought leaders across a wide range of industries and published the findings in Ireland’s Startup Manifesto. The manifesto, which highlighted the strengths and opportunities of the startup landscape in Ireland, sought to address four main pillars: access to talent, access to finance, startup supports and the general business environment.

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Read this manifesto here

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A new Manifesto

The creation of a completely new manifesto, again following public consultation. It is clear the corporate tax system helped to get Ireland to where it is today, but it will not necessarily get us to where we are going. We are reaching the limit of Ireland’s corporate economic model. Just like we built upon the successes of a flourishing agricultural economy, if we were to build upon our current knowledge-based economy what would that look like? In seeking to rebalance our current economic model, let us consider how Ireland could get ahead of the curve and move up the 'value chain' to achieve an "Innovation Economy". 

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Our commitment is to create a quarterly 'startup ireland index' by which Ireland's development of its startup ecosystem could be measured.

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Read this manifesto here

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Visa Immigration Programme

2020 is an exciting year as we provide our first programme for facilitating international entrepreneurs relocate to Ireland and join Europe’s Startup Hub. For more information and to see how it unfolds see our main page here.