Aislinn Mahon explains how The New Market Entrants Team is currently supporting some of Enterprise Ireland’s most exciting and forward thinking music technology start-ups.
The New Market Entrants Team in the UK office is running an exciting event to highlight the level of innovation present amongst the strong cluster of fast growth music technology start up companies in Ireland.
The Global Digital Music Industry
The global music industry is adapting to the digital age at an accelerated rate, and new models for creating, consuming and accessing music are constantly being introduced into new markets. This digital landscape provides both opportunities and challenges for record labels, producers and artists. The Internet makes the distribution of music faster and easier to access, but issues of piracy have risen here. There is a strong feeling in the industry that artists should be rewarded financially for their work in the digital environment, just as they have always been in the physical world.
Ones to Watch
We know that Ireland is home to some of the most exciting and forward thinking music technology start-ups that are focused on driving opportunity and addressing the challenges faced by the music industry. Thought leading companies such as 45sound, Seevl, Whole World Band, Soundwave Analytics, Mobanode, Huggity, Riffstation and Ticketfriend are but a few of our shining stars.
 Kevin Godley, Founder and John Holland, CEO of Whole World Band The Innovation in Music Technology Showcase is being run by The New Market Entrants Team at the end of May in Dublin. Leading UK music technology representatives from companies such as Mobile Roadie, MINT Digital and Music Ally will hear about the impact of digital technology on the future of the music industry and learn about new ways of driving revenue in their business in the surroundings of The Sugar Club, one of Dublin’s most creative music venues. Topics on the day will range from digital fan engagement strategies to collaborative content creation and music discovery to mobile festivals.
 Cathal Furey, CEO of 45sound, pictured in the company’s brand new office on South William St, Dublin Watch this Space!
In the UK, digital revenues stand at one third of music industry income – an important statistic when one considers that this surpasses those of other creative industries (e.g. film, books and newspapers). There is a mood of optimism in the UK music industry, and Enterprise Ireland sees this as an end market opportunity for our client companies to capitalise on.
Contribute to the conversation #IrishMusicTech.
For more information on Enterprise Ireland’s activity in the UK music industry, contact Aislinn Mahon @ Aislinn.Mahon@Enterprise-Ireland.com or connect with her @ Aislinn_Mahon.
Digital Music, Enterprise Ireland UK, Music Technology, New Market Entrants Team, start up
Reminder:
SAPs database technology, SAP HANA is a tool for companies to manipulate large volumes of data and to build faster analytics. SAP is keen to engage with SMEs of all kinds to exploit its potential and has established a Start-Up Focus Forum to invite companies of all sizes and stages of development (up to 40m turnover) to get involved.
SAPs founder said that the Start-Up Focus Forums were the best initiative the Group took last year. SAP is strategically committed to facilitating SMEs access to this high speed, big data platform. Dublin has again been chosen to host a Start-Up Forum on Wednesday 22nd May which this year will run along the lines of a Showcase of SMEs. Ultimately, if an SME successfully develops its solution on the HANA database they can get access to SAPs customers.
14 EI clients presented last year, 8 of whom were accepted onto SAPs Accelerator Program. Ostia, one of the 8, say “Our experience of SAPs Start Up Focus Forum was entirely positive. SAP took an approach which was more like that of an innovative SME sized organization than a large corporate. With the credibility of being able to partner with SAP in this way, we have generated a significant number of opportunities which we are working on with SAP”. Head of Sales & Marketing, Ostia Software Solutions Ltd
There is potential for more companies to partake this year as, taking on board feedback, the Program has been made more SME friendly and involves access to a virtual resource centre. To get started e-mail or call: andrei.grigoriev@sap.com or call +353-87-790-7267.
Starting a new company based on technology research is one clear success we can all relate to. However, as with the creation of any new company, this is a challenge to achieve successful.
Enterprise Ireland is the Irish Stage Agency with responsibility for maximising the commercial outputs from publicly funded research.
The successful creation of any new company depends on its team and the health of its entrepreneurial heartbeat. Frequently, in the case of new companies striving to emerge from this publicly funded research system, it can be a challenge to marry the company’s technology talent with commercial experience in a way that supercharges the opportunity.
Enterprise Ireland recognises this as a challenge and has created the Business Partners Programme to identify, engage and support experienced entrepreneurs’ to partner with talented technical teams from Irish 3rd level ecosystem in creating new business.
A Business Partner has excellent business credentials, a stuffed contacts book, a good nose for commercial potential and the vision to translate new technologies into excellent businesses.
The Business Partner Programme has a track record of successful partnerships that have led to new start up companies and have benefited all participants while also adding to the Irish state’s confidence in research commercialisation.
View the Business Partner Programme video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyQpkF8jKnk
Watch the Dublin Web Summit ‘Live’ here on Wednesday 17th & Thursday 18th October 2012.
Over 200 international speakers and 3,000 plus attendees from 50+ countries will descend on Dublin. This event is sponsored by Enterprise Ireland. There are 5 concurrent sessions which you can watch live from 9:15am - Main Event, Cloud Session, Digital Marketing Stream, Developer Stream and Interviews.
For the first time there will be a dedicated Digital Marketing Stream .
Digital Marketing Stream Schedule
Wednesday
09:15 – Cillian Kieran, Founder & CEO of Folio & CKSK
09:30 – Alan Coleman, CEO of Wolfgang Digital
09:45 – Andrzej Moyseowicz, Strategy & Innovation Director at Saatchi & Saatchi
10:00 - Ronan Harris, Senior Director at Google
10:15 - Joshua March, Co-founder & CEO of Conversocial
10:30 – Hubert Grealish, Global Head of Brand Communications at Diageo
10:45 – Mark Henderson, General Manager of LivingSocial Ireland
11:00 - BREAK
11:30 - Niall Harbison, Co-founder of Simply Zesty
11:45 - Dharmesh Shah, Co- founder & CTO of Hubspot
12:00 - Stephen O’Leary, O’Leary Analytics
12:15 - Joe Stepniewski, Co-Founder of Skimlinks
12:30 - Jon Myers, Commercial Director at Marin Software
12:45: Silje Vallestad, CEO & Founder of Bipper
13:00 - LUNCH
14:00 – Gregor Poynton, Political Director (UK) at Blue State Digital
14:15 – Alexis Dormandy, Founder & CEO of LoveThis
14:30 – Mark Dewings, Brand & Marketing Communications for SoundCloud
14:45 – Aubrey Sabala, VP of Marketing & Communications at Sailthru
15:00 – Scott Belsky, Founder & CEO of Behance
15:15 – Mark Kornfilt, Co-founder of Livestream
Thursday
09:15 - Joanna Lord, VP of Growth Marketing at SEOmoz
09:30 - Caroline Ghosn, Founder & CEO of The Levo League
09:45 - Maya Baratz, Senior Product Manager at ABC News
10:00 - Bas Van Den Beld, Founder & Chief Editor of State of Search
10:15 - Ryan Holmes, CEO of Hootsuite
10:30 - BREAK
11:00 – Sarah Wood, Co-founder & COO of Unruly Media
11:15 - Rachel Tipograph, Director, Global Digital & Social Media at Gap Inc.
11:30 - Kathryn Parsons, Co-founder of Decoded
11:45 - Jan Rezab, CEO of SocialBakers
12:00 - Cindy Gallop, Founder of Make Love Not Porn & IfWeRanTheWorld
12:15 - Brian Wong, Co-founder & CEO of Kiip
12:30 - Omid Ashtari, Director of Business Development at Foursquare
 Carole Brenan, EI, and Minister John Perry Launching the Fund Do you know someone who wants to set up a new business in Donegal, Sligo or Leitrim? If you do, we would be grateful if you could please advise them of the following:
Enterprise Ireland has launched a new feasibility fund to help entrepreneurs research their business ideas. Funding of up to €25,000 per project will be considered on a competitive basis (up to 50% of eligible expenditure).
But…..please hurry as the closing date is this Friday, the 22nd of June .
This fund is open to applications from the ICT, Industrial and Food sectors including the following sub-sectors: Internet, Games SaaS, Cloud Computing, Enterprise Software, Telecoms, Lifesciences, Cleantech and Industrial Products. Full details of the fund including the application form can be found at http://www.enterprise-ireland.com/nwf
What have AMCS, Storyful and Cloudium Systems got in common? They are all successful Irish companies who were started by entrepreneurs who were previously employed in senior management positions and successfully transitioned to self-employment.
Enterprise Ireland is interested in assisting commercially experienced individuals in making the transition from employment to entrepreneurship. We are presently considering launching a new programme targeted at those who are interested in starting a business but who are not just ready to give up the “day job” just yet.
In the present economic climate the notion of setting up your own business may be a daunting one but it’s the ideal time if you have the right idea. Learning how to go about doing this is the first step for any potential entrepreneur. If this type of programme is something that you may have any level of interest in we would be very grateful if you would click and submit the following survey (which should take no longer than 5 mins of your time).
Please visit the survey on https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/ProposedETP or share this if you think it could be of interest to friends/contacts.
Everyone will still be talking about football on June 18th but we want to use the EURO 2012 championships as an opportunity to highlight links between Polish and Irish startup communities, and to discuss opportunities for the startups in their respective export markets. Enterprise Ireland, the Guinness Enterprise Centre and Huge Thing (the leading accelerator for start-ups in Poland) have teamed up to host a video conference event to give Irish and Polish start-ups a chance to learn from each other and participate in a pitching competition.
Date: Monday 18th June
Time: Lunch at 12.30 followed by the video conference at 1 pm;
Venues: Guinness Enterprise Centre in Dublin and Centrum Konferencyjne POLSKA 13 in Poznań
If you are interested in participating, please register via email to naghmeh.reilly@enterprise-ireland.com, and please feel free to pass this invitation on to others who may be interested. If you’re not able to make it we’ll be providing extensive coverage on Twitter, hashtag is #startupbridge.
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Agenda
12.30 – Lunch, GEC Conference Room 3
13.00 – Welcome and introductions, Eamonn Sayers, Manager at the Guinness Enterprise Centre
13.10 – “Huge Thing in Poznan – preparing startups for global success”, Arek Hajduk, Co-founder and CEO at Huge Thing
13.25 -“Ireland’s Startup Ecosystem, EI’s role”, Naghmeh Reilly, Senior Marketing Executive, Overseas Entrepreneurship at Enterprise Ireland
13.40 - Dawid Piaskowski, CEO and founder of Booklikes.com, “Doing a global startup from Poland”
13.55 – “Assistance for Startups in Ireland”, Richard Morton, Venture Consultant at DBIC
14.05 – “Polish startup’s experience in Ireland”, Mike Sikorsky, CEO and founder of Huggity
14.20 – Q&A
14.30 – Pitch Contest
- 6 teams (3 Dublin, 3 Poznań)
- Dublin: TextMeADrink; Cluey; 45Sound
- Poznań: Lorneta; Moodup; Pocademy; Sellbox
15.20 – “Seed Investing in Poland”, Bartek Gola, Managing Partner at SpeedUp Venture Capital Group
15.40 -“Scaling for Global Success”, Benetel
16.00 Wrap-up
As part the 2012 series of lean events, Thousand Seeds are hosting two half day workshops on 1st and 2nd May focused on practical ways to be customer centric to achieve sales. Delivered by Brant Cooper (author of ‘The Entrepreneurs Guide to Customer Development’), the sessions build upon the earlier successful events hosted by Thousand Seeds. Enterprise Ireland sees these events as supporting entrepreneurs who want to grow and prosper, bring as they do, key actors to Ireland to share their experience.
 http://www.flickr.com/photos/aussiegall/2674070552/sizes/n/in/photostream/ More information and registration for the event is on EventBrite. Places are limited to 50 participants per workshop. Thousands seeds also share their knowledge on their blog.
This in-depth, hands-on workshop is designed for entrepreneurs, corporates and SME’s who want to be customer-centric and to raise their odds for building successful products, OR CEO’s, CTO’s and consultants who work with getting products to market. As well as including a pdf copy of Brant’s book, the workshop will cover
- Learn how to Get Started
- The difference between listening to customers and doing what they say
- How Customer Development fits into the Build -> Measure -> Learn framework
- The Stages of Customer Development
- When NOT to do Customer Development
Praise for Brandt , the workshop host, from a previous Thousand Seeds Speaker;
“Brant is one of the foremost experts in the emerging science of entrepreneurship. I’ve seen him teach about customer development and it’s practical, action-oriented, and persuasive. I’ve had the pleasure of hosting Brant at several conferences, and he always delivers.”
- Eric Ries, Author, The Lean Startup
More information on EI’s Lean Engagement for Software Companies on BestConnected.
Lean, Potential Exporters
If you are an active investor or an early stage company seeking funding, then you will know that there is a lot of chatter and activity around angel investment at the moment.
Not surprisingly in these tough economic times there is a lot more activity around the start-up scene, as many people find themselves looking to generate employment and as always, investors look for new business opportunities.
Yet for all the successes and supports available at the moment to the start-up, Angel investment as an investment type, on the island of Ireland, it is still pretty fair to say that we are in the early stages when you compare us to the US, but also to many of our European neighbours, not least Scotland or even France. It’s clear that we need to keep educating, sharing knowledge and building our own expertise in Ireland.
And Angels don’t come in one shape or form. Forget the TV stereotypes or the Silicon Valley expectation when you think of the Angel. There is no Golden Pages listing, and for once Googling doesn’t seem to work either. But the appetite for Angel investment is out there, and I’d say greater than ever before. We just need to tap into it and bring together the start-ups with the angels, creating dialogue and deals.
One unique form of angel investment is that of the syndicated group, a category that entails bringing together a group of individual investors to act as one. One such group in Ireland are Bloom Equity who have recently closed a number of investments with Irish start-ups. Like most angel investors, this group is made up of people who not only bring cash to the table, but also critically experience and insight into growing companies ready for international expansion.
Xcell Partners will be hosting Angel Meetup2012 in Dublin, an event, targeting both Angel Investors and Entrepreneurs. We have gathered a group of speakers from north and south of the island, plus a truly unique international line-up. The event is headlined by internationally renowned angel investor Bill Payne. Alongside Bill on the panel of speakers are Gavin Duffy, Entrepreneur & Irish Dragon’s Den Presenter; Bill Liao, Entrepreneur & Micro Angel; Danny Moore of Loughshore Investments based in Belfast; Nelson Gray an experienced Scottish investor; and accomplished business leader Leslie Buckley.
The event is calling all entrepreneurs with a pitching competition where 4 budding start-ups will get the chance to receive some one-to-one mentoring from Bill Payne. In addition, we will be hosting a master class workshop for budding angel investors in the afternoon.
The event will be taking place at Startupbootcamp located in Barrow Street, Dublin, a recent initiative which is taking 10 early stage companies through an intensive development programme. To find out more about the event head to http://www.angelmeetup2012.com
EI are delighted to say that we have two complimentary tickets to attend Angel Meetup 2012 for readers of BestComnected. To be in with a chance to win these tickets, just leave a comment below – don’t forget to include a valid email address so we can contact you if you win! We’ll pick two names randomly and announce the winners here on the blog on Friday the 16th of March.
Update: Winners chosen (randomly selected using the draw sequencer at random.org), congratulations to Gerard O’Brien of recipebook.ie and Kevin Lowe of payByMobile - enjoy the conference gents!
This is a guest post from Mary Carty, a participant in IGAP 1. We in Enterprise Ireland are delighted to announce that they we are planning to run a further Internet Growth Acceleration Programme in Quarter 4 of 2012.
Participating in iGap 1 changed everything. From working with Sean Ellis, Oren Michels, Justin Knecht, Cathy Winston and Brian Caulfield many things become abundantly clear and you find yourself becoming an evangelist about lean startup, customer development and most of all, being passionate about your customers.
As well as applying what I have learned to my own company, I have been blogging about bringing this thinking to the arts and cultural sector. From this, I have been invited to mentor on Growing Pains, a business development programme for 12 Danish and Swedish female Transmedia producers. Held over six months, participants will engage in modules on developing new services, financing, media training, sales, presentation skills, business development and investment. In May, they will take part in Nordic Game, one of the largest game conferences in Europe.
 Image (c) http://www.stranger.no with thanks Growing pains came from a report investigating the barriers facing Transmedia producers when seeking government support in Scandinavia. The researchers looked at funding, management and financing among others. Research found that male and female producers site similar needs for support access to funding, mentorship, investment, networking etc. It showed that more women than men apply for government funding from this sector, yet very few of them are successful.
When looking at risk taking for example, it observed that on average, men take bigger risks with significantly larger losses, should the enterprise not work out. Men also look for larger revenue deals than women. Whereas, females are less risk averse, with often a more sustainable company over the lifetime of that enterprise. Many female producers felt they needed more knowledge and training before making the leap into business, while men on the other hand, threw themselves into the enterprise.
While these findings are not new; proportionately more men successfully accessing support and being more open to risk taking; it does point to a specific need when developing enterprise development programmes for women. Why such a large proportion of women do not succeed in accessing public supports is worth examining. Putting mechanisms in place to deal with specific skills gaps is crucial to the future success and development of these entrepreneurs.
It is also important to look at risk, how women view risk when starting a business and to challenge these perceptions. Motivation and perception are very necessary ingredients when starting out, as these motivations may differ significantly from person to person and between males and females. In understanding, supporting and challenging these issues, skills gaps and perceptions, programmes like Growing Pains will help build pathways to success for female entrepreneurs everywhere.
Why is a programme like this so necessary for Transmedia right now? Digital production and distribution has made old value chains, distribution and business models obsolete. This is a great challenge for the public support system. At the same time, this new disruptive technology is the keystone for Transmedia producers’ success; to strengthen their entrepreneurial skills, to thinking beyond public project financing, in developing and exploiting brands and being innovative in finding alternate sources of funding.
The measure of success for any new programme is the traction and buzz it gains. And Growing Pains is no different, as applications to this first programme were well over subscribed. This shows there is a definite need for programmes like this and I know that it will prove to be a valuable contribution to these entrepreneurs’ success.
I am extremely fortunate to be working with two visionary leaders in this field; Cecilie Stranger-Thorsen who devised the programme and Angeli Sjöström process and implementation coach. Both Cecilie and Angeli bring the best thinking and an in-depth knowledge of this field together and I’m looking forward to learning lots from them. The Growing Pains programme is funded under the EU Regional Development Fund in partnership with Nordic Game Resources.
female entrepreneurs, Lean Startup, Nordic, Sweden
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