ment with Ireland he became chairman of the ITLG, and has led

Transcription

01-Cover
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02-INI-IrishCenter
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03-TOCVersion2
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contents
An interview with John Hartnett, founder and
president of the ITLG 4
Meet the Silicon Valley 50 6-20
An exclusive interview with Craig Barrett, former
CEO and chairman of Intel, and chairman of the
ITLG 22-24
Irish Innovation Center: Gateway to
Silicon Valley 25
2010 was an exciting year for the
ITLG. A review of the group’s
events in Ireland and Silicon Valley
26-27
A profile of the New Tech Post in
Ireland 28
What does the future hold for
Ireland? 30
Introducing the 2011 ITLG Technology
Award Nominee Companies 32-38
ITLG’s University Challenge winner,
Miravex 40
ITLG’s partnership with Dublin
City University 40
Moving to Silicon Valley? 42
ITLG’s Management Team and Advisory
Board 43
SILICONVALLEY50 l APRIL2011 3
04-Hartnett Interview
3/22/11
2:26 PM
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HARTNETT’S WISH FOR IRELAND IN SILICON VALLEY
BY TOM MURPHY
HE Irish Technology
Leadership Group
(ITLG) was established in
2007, and consists of a
number of high-level technology leaders who have
ties to Ireland of one type
or another. Its mission is
to help Ireland address the
challenges and take
advantage of the potential
that new technological
opportunities represent.
As well as hosting an
annual awards ceremony
to showcase Irish talent,
the ITLG has had contact
with over 200 companies
working in or intending to ITLG founder John Hartnett.
come to Silicon Valley. It
facilitates opportunities for Irish technology companies coming to Silicon
Valley through its network of more than 1,500 senior executives from companies like Cisco, Intel, Apple, Microsoft and Google.
The ITLG also helps by providing advice, opening doors in a way that
otherwise would not be possible, and offering Irish CEOs and entrepreneurs
the opportunity to connect with major customers.
John Hartnett is the president and founder of the ITLG, and we spoke to
him about his perspective on the relationship between Ireland and Silicon
Valley. One observation that he has is centered on the lack of any kind of
serious large-scale Irish company in the Californian technology scene.
“Ireland doesn’t really hit the radar screen in any significant way over here.
Countries like Israel, for example, hit the radar screen. Countries like Taiwan
hit the radar screen, as does China. But Ireland doesn’t hit the radar
screen,” Hartnett feels.
“Ireland historically has been a low-cost, attractive place from a business
tax perspective. Hence all the big multinational companies located themselves in Ireland. So Ireland has kind of been seen as an outsource destination, but it hasn’t been seen as a country that is generating its own hightech multinationals.”
A direct comparison can be made with Israel, a country of roughly a similar size in terms of population but producing very different results.
“Ireland today has about three companies on the NASDAQ. Israel has
127 companies on the NASDAQ. Israel has really been very bold in what
they have done,” said Hartnett.
“Israeli companies come to Silicon Valley to be successful. Irish companies are not coming as they should to Silicon Valley to do business.
“Also, Israel comes to Silicon Valley to get money — 40% of all the VC
capital that’s invested across the United States is invested in and around
Silicon Valley. Irish companies aren’t coming here to take advantage of that.
“Ireland is investing something in the order of 1% to 1.5% of GDP in R&D.
Israel has been investing 4.5% to 5% of GDP. That’s a massive chunk of
money.
“Ireland has a commitment to the Smart Economy to bring that [investment] to 2.5% by 2015, and ultimately get it to 3% by 2020, but guess
T
4 SILICONVALLEY50 l APRIL2011
what, we need to be at that
now – not in 2020.”
For technology companies, Silicon Valley is the
center of the universe. As
Hartnett points out, there
are three reasons to go to
California.
“One, you have access
to the greatest collection of
technology companies in
the world. These companies are all over the world
doing things with sales and
operations. But you want to
come to the heart of where
they’re at, and that’s their
headquarters,” he advises.
“Number two, if you’re
going to get investment, a
smart investment from someone who is going to change your organization
and make you a true winner, these VCs, these angel groups are sitting here,
not in Ireland.
“The third piece is access to talent. You have the world’s talent sitting here
– guys that invented Google, guys that are running companies like
Facebook or Twitter – if you want to build your organization and build some
key leadership the valley is where you will find an abundance of talent.
“Areas in Ireland that I believe could be improved are sales and marketing
and CEO leadership. You always want to get the best of the best in your
company.
“So the three reasons to come to Silicon Valley are access to customers,
access to capital, access to talent. If you want to understand what is going
to shape your company in the future, it is your people, your ability to get customers, and your ability to get funded, and that’s all sitting here.
“We don’t need to replicate Silicon Valley, we need to be part of Silicon
Valley. We can spend a lot of our time thinking about how to become Silicon
Valley. The best thing to do is get on board, get with it. Let’s be part of Silicon
Valley.”
The ITLG has set up an innovation center right in the heart of Silicon
Valley as a launch pad for Irish companies to set themselves up, and to
make it easy for them to do the necessary networking and have the essential face-to-face meetings.
The ITLG is determined to create the most powerful Irish network in
the world. The Irish Diaspora is estimated to consist of over 40 million
people. If this huge and powerful potential resource could be harnessed, organized and focused, then the door opens for all sorts of
great and marvelous possibilities.
05-SVB- Irish Times ADS
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06-SiliconValleyBios1
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INTRODUCING THE SILICON VALLEY 50. THE FOLLOWING
INDIVIDUALS ARE MAKING A SIGNIFICANT IMPACT IN THE FIELD OF
TECHNOLOGY, AND HAVE EXCELLED AS A RESULT OF THEIR HARD WORK,
CREATIVITY, INTELLIGENCE, DEDICATION AND DETERMINATION.
CONOR ALLEN
KEVIN BARRETT
BY LISA JACKSON
ONOR Allen is the
Global Head of
Research and Development
at NYSE Technologies, the
commercial technology division of NYSE Euronext.
In this role, he is responsible for identification, evaluation and application of new
and emerging technology to
the commercial technology
business. In 2010, Allen
launched the NYSE
Technologies Technical Advisory Group, a set of senior and influential
technologies focused on the global capital markets technology.
Allen was instrumental in the creation, development and launching of
the NYSE Technologies Data Fabric, a multi-transport shared memory
based messaging system that provides breakthrough messaging performance in terms of latency and throughput leveraging the capabilities
of the latest generation in networking technology.
Allen describes himself as “mostly from Galway.” His mother lives in
Moycullen and he completed his leaving certificate in St. Ignatius
College, Galway, locally known as the Jes.
He studied engineering at Queen’s University Belfast and then acquired
an MSc in computer science. He began his career as a consultant
with Kainos Software in Belfast before opening the development office
for Wombat Financial Software in 2004.
Allen recalls, “Four of us joined on the same day to open that office.
The day we joined, the company more than doubled in size. In 2008,
we were 142 people. We were acquired then by the New York Stock
Exchange.”
Working in New York was a logical career progression. “When I was
part of Wombat I traveled relatively regularly visiting customers and having meetings to understand what our customer needed. Subsequent to
our acquisition I started spending a week to two weeks a month in
New York,” he says.
“I recall the first time I walked down Broad Street which is near where
our NYSE headquarters are. I remember walking past it and walking
on Wall Street and thinking, ‘Wow there’s the NYSE.’ Never did I think
that a guy from Connemara would end up working there.”
Allen sees Silicon Valley as “one of the most innovative places in the
world. In terms of accessing capital it’s a great place to do that, especially the sort of capital that’s hard come by in other parts of the world.”
The focus of the ITLG for Allen is “around linking people of Irish heritage, and also to focus on how that network can help industry and
technological innovation in the island of Ireland, and to help young
companies get a foothold in Silicon Valley.”
C
EVIN Barrett is Senior Vice
President and Chief
Information Officer at Elan
Corporation plc, and is responsible for Elan’s Global IT strategy, policies, standards and
operations.
In 2003, Barrett led the implementation of a Global IT
Management Control System
for Elan certified to ISO 9001,
ISO 20000-1, ISO 27001 and
ISO 38500.
Barrett joined Elan in 1996 and
held IT management positions
of increasing responsibility at
Elan locations in Ireland and the U.S.
A systems analyst by training, Barrett held a number of senior technical and design positions at Wang Laboratories VARs in Ireland.
A native of Ireland, he now resides in the Silicon Valley area.
K
GERALD BRADY
ERALD Brady is a Managing Director within SVB’s Venture Capital
Group, hired to lead two important initiatives for the company. He is
responsible for leading SVB’s
Entrepreneur Services Group as well
as the company’s work with corporate
venture and corporate development
groups.
Brady oversees a team dedicated to
supporting emerging technology and
life science companies by engaging
founders and CEOs with relevant,
high-impact programming and networking events to add significant value
during their development stages.
Brady also maintains and develops relationships with corporate venture
and corporate development groups which the company believes will play
an increasingly important role in the venture ecosystem in the future.
Prior to joining SVB, Brady served as the director of investor relations for
Siemens AG. He was also an acquisition director in the Strategic
Planning Group at Siemens Corporation, and served as a managing
director of Siemens Acceleration USA.
Brady holds an honors degree from Kingston University and an MBA
from Cranfield University.
G
3/22/11
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CONRAD BURKE
SHANE BUCKLEY
BY CONOR HARRINGTON
HANE Buckley is
the SVP and GM
of Business Products
at NETGEAR, a leader
in branded technology
solutions for networking, storage, and
security that address
the specific needs of
small and midsized
business and home users. Buckley is responsible for sales, marketing and product strategy for NETGEAR’s business lines of
products worldwide.
Previously, Buckley was president and CEO of Rohati Systems, a
leader in Cloud-based access management solutions. Prior to
Rohati, Buckley was Chief Operating Officer of Nevis Networks, a
leader in secure switching and access control.
Buckley is a graduate of engineering from the Cork Institute of
Technology. He is a regular contributor to global media such as
eWeek, Network World, and WSJ, among others. He is a presenter at leading conferences, and was the winner of the Most
Valuable Performers Award 2008 from Network Products Guide.
S
LIAM CASEY
IAM Casey is the
founder and CEO
of PCH International.
PCH creates, develops and delivers the
world’s best technology products for the
world’s best brands.
Casey founded PCH
in Co. Cork in 1996.
He has grown the
business to well over
$400 million in revenue and 1,200
employees in China,
Ireland, the U.K.,
U.S. and South
Africa.
PCH’s major clients
include three of the
top five personal computer companies, three of the top five telecom and networking companies, and three of the top five consumer electronics companies worldwide.
Casey is widely recognized as a thought leader on international
trade and business in China. He was awarded Ernst & Young’s
Entrepreneur of the Year – Ireland accolade in 2007.
L
ONRAD Burke is the President and CEO of Innovalight, a
company that enables solar cell manufacturers to make
cheaper, more efficient products through the application of its
patented technologies.
“It’s a technology that’s used in the solar energy space. We
developed an advanced semiconductor material, it’s called silicon ink. Silicon is not known, usually, as a liquid, but we developed it as a liquid and that liquid can be printed,” says Burke.
“It gets used in the process to produce solar cells, and it
allows those solar cells to become more efficient in converting
light into electricity. So, we’re kind of an addition to existing
solar cell manufacturing lines around the world.”
Burke was born in Dublin. After graduating with a master’s
degree in physics, he spent time working in Japan, Germany
and the U.K. and now resides in the U.S.
“I have a track record in my personal career of having raised
probably in excess of about $120 million for the two start-ups
that I’ve been involved in. I do know how to raise capital, not
just from Silicon Valley but from Europeans, from Asia and from
the Department of Energy,” Burke said.
He also feels that his company building and fundraising skills
could also be of value to those that are starting out in business
themselves.
“For me, that’s what the ITLG is about. It’s helping to give back
something. I think the team has been successful in their own
personal lives and I think it’s a way to help budding entrepreneurs in Ireland to become established in the international
framework.
“I think we can continue to grow our reach and our support and
help those budding entrepreneurs. I think that’s something to
strive for, and that I personally would like to see.”
C
3/22/11
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ADELE COOPER
ED COLLIGAN
D Colligan, former president
and CEO of Palm, Inc., is currently spending his time investing
in and mentoring small business
entrepreneurs. During his years
at Palm, Colligan was instrumental in building Palm’s business
and culture since 1993.
In his last four years as CEO, he
drove Palm’s global leadership in
innovative mobile products, such
as the company’s groundbreaking Palm webOS platform and
Palm Pre phone, and was
responsible for company strategy.
Colligan has been part of starting or founding five technology companies in Silicon Valley, including Handspring, Inc., the company behind
the design and development of the Treo smartphone. As president
and chief operating officer, he designed the marketing strategy for
Handspring’s handheld computers and smartphones.
Earlier in his career, Colligan was vice president of strategic and
product marketing at Radius Corporation.
Colligan earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Oregon.
E
DENNIS CROWLEY
ENNIS
Crowley is the
co-founder and
CEO of
foursquare.
Previously, he
founded
Dodgeball, one of
the first mobile
social services in
the U.S., which
was acquired by
Google in 2005.
Crowley has been
named one of the
“Top 35
Innovators Under
35” by MIT’s
Technology Review magazine (2005) and has won the “Fast
Money” bonus round in the TV game show Family Feud (2009).
His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street
Journal, Wired, Time and Newsweek. He is currently an adjunct
professor at New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications
Program (ITP).
Crowley holds a master’s degree from NYU’S ITP, and a bachelor’s degree from the Newhouse School at Syracuse University.
D
DELE Cooper is Director of Global Customer Marketing
and Communications for Facebook, and is based in the
company’s headquarters in Palo Alto, California.
Founded in 2004, Facebook’s mission is to give people the
power to share and make the world more open and connected. In her current role, Cooper manages all outbound marketing and communications to Facebook’s advertising clients
and agency partners globally.
Prior to joining Facebook, Cooper spent six years at Google,
where she was Director of Global Customer Marketing. In her
early years at Google, she was Director of Online Sales and
Operations for the U.K., Irish and Benelux markets, based at
the company’s EMEA headquarters in Dublin.
As the first local manager hire for Google in Dublin, Cooper
played an instrumental role in the development of the Dublin
office.
Prior to joining Google, Cooper spent several years in business development at a number of different technology ventures in Dublin. She began her career in finance and business planning at Disney Interactive (the multi-media division of
the Walt Disney Company), based in both the U.S. and
France.
Born and raised in Dublin, Cooper earned a BA from Stanford
University and an MBA from Harvard
Business School.
A
09-SiliconValleyBios 4
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SEAN CUNNINGHAM
BILL DALY
EAN Cunningham has spent
over 25 years managing,
investing and building companies
in the high tech industry.
Cunningham joined Intel in 1994
and has worked in multiple management roles in marketing and
sales. He spent three years as an
entrepreneur with Intel startup
companies funded by Intel New
Business Investment group.
He has been making equity investments with Intel Capital since
2000, and is currently Director of
Strategic Investments responsible for enterprise and Internet security
technology investments for Intel.
He leads investments for multiple Intel business units, including
Enterprise Products Group, Desktop Products Group, Mobile
Products Group, Software Solutions Group and Solutions Market
Development Group.
Prior to Intel, Cunningham was responsible for marketing and service
management functions for over five years with Sequent Computers.
He also held numerous finance management and marketing positions
during his seven years at ISC Systems.
Cunningham graduated from Gonzaga University with a BBA in
Finance and Management, and an MBA from Gonzaga University.
ILL Daly started his career at
the American Broadcasting
Company in 1977 in Hollywood,
and his credits include multiple
Academy Awards broadcasts,
the 1984 Summer Olympics,
and a number of musical, variety
and comedy specials.
In 1986, he joined LorimarTelepictures, where he worked
on a number of television series
and contributed to several feature films. Shortly after LorimarTelepictures’ acquisition by
Warner Communications, Daly
relocated to their Burbank
Studios and joined Warner Bros. Pictures.
He moved to post production as its director in 1997; became its vice
president in 2003 and senior vice president in 2006. During his tenure
at Warner Bros. Pictures, Daly has overseen hundreds of theatrical
motion pictures including all of the Harry Potter films, The Matrix trilogy,
Batman and Robin, Batman Begins, Ocean’s 11, The Departed and
The Dark Knight.
Daly is currently supervising the completion of Harry Potter and the
Deathly Hallows.
Daly was born to Irish immigrants in the suburbs of Philadelphia. He
graduated magna cum laude from the Temple University School of
Communications and Theater in 1977.
S
ED DEENIHAN
D Deenihan is
Executive Vice
President of Customer
Advocacy at NetApp. He
is responsible for driving
efficiency and transformation initiatives across
NetApp in order to optimize the customer and
partner experience.
Deenihan joined NetApp in
2000 and has a long history of successfully leading
new initiatives, including
the design and build out of
NetApp’s Technical
Support, Professional Services and Corporate Quality programs.
Prior to working at NetApp, Deenihan was president of the EDS
Technology Sector Strategic business unit. In this role, he was
responsible for all marketing, sales, and service delivery operations to
U.S.-based EDS clients in the tech sector. He began his career at
General Motors, with assignments in the U.S. and the U.K.
Deenihan holds a bachelor of science degree and a master of business administration degree from the University of Detroit.
B
BRIAN DESMOND
E
RIAN Desmond is Vice
President of Marketing
at Guidewire Software, a
leading provider of core systems to P&C insurance carriers. He is responsible for
the development and execution of global marketing
strategy, including demand
creation, branding, product
marketing and PR.
Previously, Desmond served
as Vice President of
Marketing for PeopleSoft’s
Supply Chain division,
where he led marketing
efforts for a division with
$300 million in annual revenue. Prior to PeopleSoft, he served in a variety or marketing roles at
Ketera, Ariba and Tradex Technologies.
Desmond, a native of Cork City, graduated in 1992 with a bachelor of
commerce degree from University College Cork.
B
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RORY DOOLEY
CAROLINE DONAHUE
AROLINE Donahue is
senior vice president of
sales and channel marketing
at Intuit, responsible for selling
Intuit products and services
across several channels.
These range from telesales,
retail stores, resellers and
alliances to mobile communication companies, including
carriers, handset providers
and application developers.
Donahue joined Intuit in May
1995 as director of sales,
responsible for retail sales
and merchandising.
Before coming to Intuit, Donahue was director of sales at
Knowledge Adventure, an educational software maker. She previously worked in various sales and channel management positions
at Apple Computer and Next, Inc.
Donahue holds a bachelor of arts degree in liberal arts from
Northwestern University.
C
BRIAN DUNN
RIAN Dunn is the
chief executive officer of Best Buy, a multinational retailer of technology and entertainment products and
services with a commitment to growth and
innovation. He
assumed the role of
Best Buy CEO on June
24, 2009.
Dunn started with Best
Buy in 1985 as a sales
associate when the
company operated just a dozen stores. In 1989 he became a
store manager, and in 1990 a district manager in Minnesota.
He was promoted to regional manager for Ohio, Indianapolis and
Philadelphia stores in 1996, and in May, 1998 he became regional vice president of the northeastern region, leading Best Buy’s
entry into that market. He was promoted to senior vice president
of Division 3 Retail Sales in March 2000, which encompassed all
of Best Buy’s East Coast operations.
He was named Executive Vice President of U.S. Retail in 2002,
and President of Retail, North America, in 2004. He was named
president and chief operating officer of Best Buy in 2006.
Dunn also is a member of the Best Buy Board of Directors.
B
ORY DOOLEY joined
Logitech in California in
1984. As the company
embarked on a phase of
rapid expansion, he was
part of the teams that set
up Logitech, Taiwan and
then Logitech, Ireland.
Dooley later went on to
lead the R&D group in
Switzerland before assuming leadership for the pointing device business unit in
1993. He left Logitech in
1997 and became COO of
Audiosoft, an early player in
the Internet music space,
and then became CEO of
Linkvest, a software service provider in the Geneva area of
Switzerland.
Dooley returned to Logitech in 2005 and is currently Senior Vice
President and general manager of the Control Devices business unit.
Dooley is originally from Co. Waterford. He studied engineering in
Trinity College where he graduated with first class honors.
R
JOSEPH FLYNN
OSEPH Anthony Flynn
is the CEO and cofounder of Lavante, Inc.,
a company recognized
as the on-demand leader
and innovator in the
areas of profit recovery
and supplier information
management. Lavante is
located in San Jose, currently employees over 65
persons and is growing
rapidly.
In 2009, Flynn was recognized as one of the 40
leading executives under
the age of 40 by the
J
Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal.
Flynn currently serves on the Board of Directors of Work2Future, the
Silicon Valley Workers Investment Board.
Flynn graduated from Santa Clara University in 1992 with a BS
degree in Economics. He is currently a member of the Olympic
Club in San Francisco.
Flynn is married to Jacqueline and is the father of four daughters —
Shanna, Elena, Jenna and Christina.
3/22/11
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JOHN GILMORE
JOHN HARTNETT
OHN Gilmore has over 20
years of executive management and operations experience with high tech consumer
electronics and manufacturing
companies.
At Sling Media, the digital
media company that develops
and markets the Slingbox and
SlingPlayer technologies,
Gilmore has been responsible
for growing the company from
a startup consumer electronics
firm to an integral part of Echostar Corporation (Nasdaq: SATS), the
Denver-based video technology provider.
Gilmore was instrumental in guiding Sling through the successful
acquisition by EchoStar in October 2007. Sling continues to offer
new, innovative and award-winning ways for consumers to experience broadcast and IP delivered video content.
Prior to joining Sling, Gilmore worked at smartphone device manufacturer Handspring (acquired by Palm) and prior to that, with Iomega
Corporation.
He started his career with 10 years in the strategic and operations
consulting practices of Arthur Andersen and Andersen Consulting. He
has extensive international experience, having worked in the U.K., the
Netherlands, Australia and the U.S.
Gilmore earned a BA in economics from the University of
Manchester, England and is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered
Accountants in England and Wales.
OHN
Hartnett
is President
and Founder
of the Irish
Technology
Leadership
Group (ITLG)
and
Technology
Investor.
Based in
Silicon
Valley,
Hartnett has
over 20
years of
senior management
experience
leading global sales,
marketing
and operations. His
career in high tech boasts some of the industry’s leading
companies such as Palm, Handspring, Metacreations,
Claris/Apple, AT&T, Digital Equipment, and Wang.
Hartnett was CEO at G24 Innovations, a leading thin film
solar company, and previously was senior vice president of
Global Markets at Palm, Inc., where he was responsible for
worldwide sales, service and support.
Previously, Hartnett was executive vice president of worldwide operations, service, support and eCommerce at
Handspring, Inc. and was an integral member of the executive leadership team that led the 2003 merger of
Handspring and palmOne to form what is known today as
Palm, Inc.
Since 2004, Hartnett has been annually honored as one of
the Top 100 Irish American business executives in the U.S.
by Irish America magazine. He is a member of the Wireless
Advisory Board in the U.S. for Enterprise Ireland, and is the
president and founder of the ITLG in the U.S.
Hartnett also currently serves on Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton’s Northern Ireland Working Committee.
Hartnett earned a marketing degree through the Marketing
Institute of Ireland, a post-graduate diploma in finance
through the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants
(ACCA), and completed the executive management program at Stanford University.
Hartnett is a native of Limerick, and on the board of the
University of Limerick Foundation. He is a member of the
American Ireland Fund and the US-Ireland Alliance.
J
KATE GUNNING
ATE Gunning is the principal of BioVisability. She
is focused on strategic market development and technology commercialization for
the Irish life sciences and
clean technology sectors.
With an expansive network
both in the U.S. and internationally, Gunning is frequently
tapped for advice and guidance on the development of
the biotech and cleantech
industries in Ireland and overseas.
A Dublin native and graduate of Dublin Institute of Technology,
Gunning’s career began in nuclear medicine and clinical pathology. She played a lead role with the Human Genome Project at the
DOE’s Joint Genome Institute.
She is a founder and co-chair of Biolink-USA and advisory board
member for the San Francisco Irish Film Festival.
K
J
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CLAIRE HAYES
TREVOR HEALY
LAIRE Hayes is managing
director of PwC. She is
based at the firm’s Silicon Valley
office and has over 16 years of
experience with PwC.
In addition to managing the overall
National Emerging Company
Services Practice, she delivers
high quality service to a portfolio of
emerging companies, currently
primarily in the life sciences sector.
Hayes excels in assisting companies manage through transition. She has extensive SEC experience;
assists public and private companies in addressing complex issues
including equity transaction accounting, revenue recognition accounting, preparing for an IPO and Sarbanes Oxley 404 implementation.
Hayes’s clients have included Align Technology, Inc., Broncus
Technologies, Inc., Concentric Medical, Inc., eBay, Inc., Epocrates,
Inc., Monogram Biosciences, Inc., Tut Systems, Inc., Varian Medical
Systems, Inc., VNUS Medical Technologies, Inc.,
Hayes is an active community leader, and is also a member of the
Development Council of Entrepreneurs Foundation.
Hayes is actively proud of her Irish heritage (particularly her Dublin
roots) and her adopted home in San Jose, engaging with the Irish
business community including the Irish Innovation Center in downtown San Jose as well as the Dublin-San Jose Sister City Program.
REVOR Healy is
Chief Innovation
Officer and a member of
the Board of Directors of
Telefonica Europe PLC.
Formerly he was CEO of
Jajah, which is now a
wholly owned subsidiary
of Telefonica.
A successful entrepreneur and NASDAQ 100
executive, Healy brings
a blend of early stage
skills and public company knowledge to his role
at Jajah. He has participated in three M&A exits, completed an IPO and Secondary
Offering on NASDAQ, and ran business units of two large public
entities.
Prior, to joining Jajah, Healy was a Vice President at PayPal, where
he led the entire sales organization.
Formerly, as a Vice President at Verisign Inc., he spearheaded the
move for consumers to shop online, and prior to this he was the
co-founder of CelNX (“Cellular Network Exchange”), a private company.
Healy graduated with a bachelor’s degree in business studies from
the University of Limerick. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area
with his wife and two young children.
C
FERGUS HURLEY
ERGUS Hurley, founder of Clixtr,
is an Irish entrepreneur based in
Silicon Valley. Hurley attended the
Stanford Summer Institute for
Entrepreneurship at the Graduate
School of Business during the summer of 2008, and following the
course he started a mobile web
company called Clixtr, Inc.
Clixtr has built at its core a real-time,
location-aware, mobile photo sharing platform. Its first product, Clixtr
iPhone App, allows people to collaboratively share photos at events and
tune into events (Clixtr.com) happening nearby and around the world.
Clixtr won the Silicon Valley Business Journal Emerging Technology Award
2009 for Social Networking, and the Consumer Electronics Show Mobile
App Showdown 2010 in Las Vegas.
Clixtr, Inc. launched PicBounce in late 2010 which is the fastest and easiest way to upload photos from an iPhone onto Facebook and Twitter.
Hurley graduated from University College Cork in electrical engineering in
2006, and completed a master’s thesis in electrical engineering and computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2008.
F
T
TOM KELLY
OM Kelly, originally from
Castlerea, Co.
Roscommon, leads the
global private capital advisory practice for the
Blackstone Group.
Kelly obtained an MBA from
MIT in 1997, where he
received a John F. Kennedy
Scholarship. After MIT, he
joined Merrill Lynch’s investment banking team in New
York before moving to
Silicon Valley in 1999.
Kelly specializes in raising
capital for companies from
venture capital funds, hedge
funds, sovereign wealth funds and strategic investors. He has
raised billions of dollars of private capital for clients in sectors
such as technology, media, healthcare, cleantech, real estate and
financial services.
Kelly is also an active angel investor.
T
3/22/11
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DR. DAVID KIRK
TOM MALLOY
R. David Kirk’s
career, spanning almost four
decades, has been
in computer and
networking technology, working for
major multinationals
such as IBM,
Amdahl and
Tandem
Computers.
In the mid 1990s Kirk joined AOL as a vice president, and his
team launched the AOL service around the world and developed and operated the business systems for billing, credit
card processing, eCommerce and Internet advertising.
Prior to his “retirement” in 2002, he was senior vice president
for Cisco Systems, leading the company’s global, core software development teams in the U.S., India and Europe as well
as its enterprise voice business.
Since 2002, Kirk has been investing in technology startups in
Ireland and Northern Ireland, and advising on early stage funding and operational growth.
Kirk was born in Belfast but has lived in Silicon Valley since
1983.
OM Malloy is senior vice
president and chief software
architect, at Adobe Systems
Incorporated. Malloy leads
Adobe’s Advanced Technology
Labs, part of the company’s
Office of Technology.
Spearheading Adobe’s longterm research and development
initiatives, he leads a team of
computer scientists who are
delivering the next generations
of Adobe software innovations.
Malloy is responsible for defining Adobe’s technology strategy as
well as overseeing multiple R&D focus areas. His organization
also takes a leading role in incubating new projects, championing
industry standards, facilitating collaboration with universities and
seeding new products.
Some of Malloy’s most significant contributions have included the
expansion of Adobe’s products to the Windows environment,
development of advanced document security technologies, and
the extension of Adobe PDF as a de facto industry standard for
automating document-based enterprise processes.
Prior to joining Adobe in 1986, Malloy worked for Apple
Computer and Xerox.
Malloy holds three patents as well as a bachelor’s and master’s
degrees in computer science from Stanford University.
D
MATT MALONEY
ATT Maloney leads Silicon
Valley Bank’s (SVB) national
Cleantech Practice. The practice
extends to SVB’s national presence with hundreds of clients
across the spectrum of innovation
in cleantech investment, ranging
from early stage technology
development to large public companies.
Maloney has over 20 years of
experience investing in the technology industry. He joined SVB in
2002, and before establishing the
Cleantech Practice in 2008, he
held various senior management positions, leading relationship
management and sales in California that covered the span of
SVB’s niche practices.
Prior to joining SVB, Maloney co-founded Inflexion Capital, a
specialty debt provider for alternative communications companies. From 1989 to 2000, he held a variety of business development and senior management positions in GATX Capital’s
Technology Services Group.
Maloney earned an AB from Guilford College, and a MBA from
Northwester’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management.
M
T
CATHAL McCARTHY
ATHAL McCarthy
is Apple’s Senior
Director, Worldwide
Sales and Service,
managing a significant
part of the business.
Drawing on his extensive experience in technology sales strategy,
McCarthy encourages
innovation and entrepreneurship to drive
positive results.
Before his current role, he served as European Director for Ziff
Davis Market Intelligence, a technical content company specializing in the telco and IT industry, where in-depth market understanding and lead-generation were his fortes.
Global Resources, Inc. provided McCarthy with an opportunity to
lead in the first major Pan European contact center in Ireland.
McCarthy earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from
University College Cork, and a master’s in finance from NUI
Maynooth.
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3/22/11
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TOM McENERY
OM McEnery
is a businessman and
writer. He was
the Mayor of San
Jose from 1983
to 1990, and has
had a long and
deep interest in
Ireland and its
history.
His master’s thesis was on Irish
nationalism and
Michael Collins.
He also edited
and wrote the
introduction to A
New Ireland:
Politics and
Reconciliation by John Hume.
McEnery’s grandparents came to the U.S. from Kerry at
the turn of the 20th century. His uncle was a priest and a
writer who was very interested in Irish history. As
McEnery says, “I kind of inherited some of his interests
as well as his library when I was in college.”
When McEnery visited Ireland for the first time when he
was 19, he felt that strange feeling of belonging that so
many members of the Irish Diaspora have when they
return to their original homeland.
“It was something for whatever reason, whether apocryphal or emotional, or maybe it was DNA programming,
but I felt an immediate connection,” he says.
McEnery feels it is vital that there is not only a connection
between Silicon Valley and Ireland, but that there is also a
connection between the research being done in Irish universities and the private sector.
He cites the American model of technology transfers as
used by MIT and Stanford as methods that could be utilized more fully by Irish institutions such as Queen’s,
Trinity College and University College Dublin.
“Transfer technology from universities to create wealth
and jobs. That is a simple and direct way to make things
happen,” he maintains.
He sees the ITLG as being a way for some members of
the Irish Diaspora who have done well to give something
back.
“I think the ITLG’s role is that of people who are Irish born
or Irish descended who have had a significant success
outside of Ireland,” says McEnery. “Now their central
interest is in seeing how they can take these skills and
utilize them to create wealth in Ireland and Irish-partnered
companies.”
T
RORY McINERNEY
ORY McInerney is Vice
President, Intel
Architecture Group and
Director of the
Microprocessor
Development Group. He
leads multiple engineering
teams responsible for the
development of Xeon and
Itanium microprocessors targeting the enterprise, cloud,
high performance computing, workstation and storage
markets for which Intel has
over 90% of worldwide market share.
McInerney has been awarded an Intel Achievement Award, holds two U.S. patents and has
published five technical papers. Prior to Intel, he worked for
Philips Research in Eindhoven, The Netherlands.
McInerney graduated from the National University of Ireland (NUI),
Cork, in 1986 with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering.
He graduated from Santa Clara University in 1997 with a master’s degree in business administration.
McInerney is an alumnus of the Graduate School of Business,
having completed the Stanford Executive Program in 2008. In
2009 he was awarded the Distinguished Alumnus Award from
NIU, Cork.
R
WILLIAM MCKIERNAN
ILLIAM S. McKiernan
founded CyberSource
Corporation in 1994 and
served as its Chairman and
CEO for 16 years.
CyberSource is one of the
largest payment processors of
Internet transactions, with over
300,000 customers processing transactions worth over
$100 billion per year. In July
2010, CyberSource was
acquired by Visa for $2 billion.
McKiernan serves on the
Board of Trustees of Boston
College and is Chairman of the Boston College West Coast
Technology Council. He also serves on the Board of Directors of
the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation, a non-profit cancer
research foundation.
McKiernan holds a B.S. from Boston College and an MBA from
Harvard Business School.
W
3/22/11
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KEVIN MELIA
EVIN Melia is the cofounder of Manufacturers
Services Ltd., and served as
chairman and CEO from
1994-2003. Manufacturers
Services is a $1.8 billion
electronics manufacturing
services company he built
and took public.
Over a five-year period from
1989-1994 at Sun
Microsystems, Melia held the
positions of Chief Financial
Officer, Executive Vice
President of Operation and
President of the computer hardware division.
Melia has held a number of senior operational, supply chain and
financial management positions in Europe and the U.S. Among
other positions, he was lead independent director of eircom, the
leading Irish telecom company.
Melia is currently Non Executive Chairman of Vette Corporation, a
private company in the thermal management sector. He also
works with and advises early stage high tech companies.
Melia is a member of the Prime Minister of Ireland’s IrelandAmerican Economic Advisory Board, and a member of the U.S.
Economic Envoy to Northern Ireland’s U.S. working Group.
Melia resides in Acton, Massachusetts.
K
PETER MILNER
ETER G. Milner is
the co-founder and
Executive Vice
President Corporate
Development at Optivia
Biotechnology.
Milner co-founded
ARYx Therapeutics and
CV Therapeutics. CV
Therapeutics was
acquired by Gilead for
$1.5 billion in 2009.
Milner restructured his
family company ML to
form Vectura
(VEC:LSE), a profitable
company and one of
the world’s leading
makers of inhaled pharmaceuticals.
Working at Washington University he discovered pleiotrophin
(PTN), a novel growth factor that regulates stem cell differentiation, organ development, and the epithelial mesenchymal
transition (EMT).
Milner serves as clinical professor at Stanford University
School of Medicine, and is a board member of the California
Healthcare Institute (CHI). Hobbies include foxhunting, polo
and breeding horses at Dungar, his farm in Ireland.
P
DAN MOLONEY
AN Moloney is President
of Motorola Mobility. He
is responsible for Motorola’s
Network Infrastructure, Home
Devices and Converged
Experiences businesses, as
well as Motorola’s Advanced
Technology, Supply Chain, IT
and Government Affairs functions.
Moloney rejoined Motorola,
Inc. in 2010 after serving as
President and Chief Executive
Officer of Technitrol. Prior to
that, he was Executive Vice
President at Motorola and
President of Motorola’s Home and Networks Mobility business,
during which he led the company to its global leadership position
in video and WiMax wireless solutions.
Moloney holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from
the University of Michigan, and a master of business administration degree from the University of Chicago.
D
CONOR MOORE
ONOR Moore has
been with KPMG
since 2002 and is currently
head of the firm’s technology and venture capital
practices in San Francisco.
Born and raised in Dublin,
Moore moved to Chicago
in 1993 with the accounting firm of Arthur Andersen.
He moved to San
Francisco in 1994 where
he currently resides with
his wife and two children,
Sean and Nicole.
Since working in California,
Moore has worked primarily in the technology,
Internet and biotechnology
industries.
Over this period, he has worked with numerous start-ups and venture
capital companies.
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16SiliconValleyBios 11
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GEORGE MOORE
BY TOM MURPHY
Moore points out. “You still have to sell the technology no matter
what happens. Even if you have the world’s best invention, people
will not beat a path to your door. You have got to sell it. At the end
of the day people buy from people.
“The ITLG has done an excellent job of creating a cluster of Irish
technology leaders. They not only interact with each other but you
also have the network effect working,” Moore adds.
“The ITLG is a good catalyst for assisting either Irish companies or
American companies with a strong Irish influence in accelerating
their growth by opening doors.”
RICHARD MORAN
EORGE Moore is Chairman and CEO of TARGUS Information
Corporation, and is a pioneer in the development of consumer information technology for business applications.
Moore grew up in Dundalk, Co. Louth, which is on the border with
Northern Ireland. He came to the U.S. in the mid-seventies after
graduating from University College Dublin with an Economics
degree and an MBSc.
At George Washington University in Washington, D.C., he acquired
an MBA and a DBA. He was also awarded an Honorary Doctorate
from the University of Ulster in 2006.
Moore became involved in the Information Technology business
while in California. After a couple of years he began starting his
own companies.
“Even though the U.S. is a very large country the IT industry is in
many ways a village. I lived in California for 11 years, and even in
Silicon Valley there is a social graph among IT professionals,” says
Moore.
As well as being a technological hub that makes it easy for technical professionals to network, Silicon Valley also serves to bring different and diverse talents together, maintains Moore.
“There is a hub of money and mature venture capitalists who know
how to build companies. There is also a great cadre of engineering
talent and a great cadre of executive talent who also know how to
build businesses,” he says.
However, great technical or managerial skills may not be enough,
G
ICHARD A. Moran is a San Francisco-based venture capitalist,
best-selling author and evangelist for organization effectiveness.
He began his career in Silicon Valley at Atari. He is best known for his
series of business books beginning with Never Confuse a Memo with
Reality, and is credited with starting the genre of Business Bullet
Books.
His newest book is Sins and CEOs, to be released later this year.
He is a partner at Irish Technology Capital and serves on the boards
of Accretive Solutions, Mechanics Bank and Integreon.
Previously he served as partner at Venrock and was also the
Chairman of Portal Software. He is a former Accenture partner where
he focused in the technology, media and financial services practice.
Moran often works with corporate boards to improve effectiveness
and serves on the board of the Silicon Valley chapter of the National
Association of Corporate Directors.
Moran holds an AB from Rutgers College, an MS from Indiana
University, and a Ph.D. from Miami University.
R
3/22/11
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MATT MURPHY
ATT
Murphy is
a partner at
Kleiner Perkins
Caufield &
Byers. He joined
the firm in 1999.
Murphy manages the iFund
at KPCB, a collaborative initiative with Apple
focused on
funding and
building defining
applications on
the iPhone OS
platform and the
mobile Internet.
His expertise is
in network communications, computer infrastructure, and
mobile applications.
Previously, Murphy was a board observer at Google (from
initial investment to IPO), led KP’s investment in Autonavi,
and was a director at Ocarina Networks (acquired by Dell in
2010), Peakstream (acquired by Google in 2008) and Dash
Navigation (acquired by RIM in 2009).
Prior to KPCB, Murphy held positions at Netboost and Sun
Microsystems. He also worked in strategic and technical
consulting for a number of years at Booz, Allen, & Hamilton
and Accenture.
Murphy holds a BS in electrical engineering from Tufts
University and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School
of Business.
M
RORY O’DRISCOLL
“A
S a former CEO I know that building companies takes a shared
commitment, and a long term perspective from management and
investors. Great markets make the opportunities, but great management teams make the difference.”
So says Rory O’Driscoll, Managing Director at Scale Venture Partners.
He has been a venture capital investor since 1993. He invests in
mobile, Internet, and enterprise software companies.
Some of his successful investments include IPOs such as Omniture
(NASDAQ, acquired by Adobe for $1.8 billion), Connect, NetGenesis,
and acquisitions including ScanSafe (acquired by Cisco), Frontbridge
(acquired by Microsoft), Zone Labs (acquired by Checkpoint),
Placeware, (acquired by Microsoft), OuterBay (acquired by HP) and
others.
Currently, O’Driscoll sits on the boards of Arena Solutions, Box.net,
DocuSign, ExactTarget, Hubspan, Livescribe, Lumension Security
NIALL O’CONNOR
IALL O’Connor has been Apple’s Chief Information Officer since
1997.
Under his leadership, the worldwide IT organization has undergone
a major transformation highlighted by a streamlined, simplified systems environment; integration of Apple’s state-of-the-art enterprise
products; and a fine-tuned cost model that allows for a significant
increase in spending on development and enhancements in support of Apple’s expanding portfolio of products and services.
O’Connor was responsible for the global implementation of SAP at
Apple, one of the largest single instances of SAP in the world and
the backbone for Apple’s world-class operational efficiencies.
Other achievements include the deployment of advanced telephony
applications in support of Apple’s growing customer service call
centers, and robust data warehousing and reporting solutions.
When Apple decided to open retail outlets, O’Connor’s team successfully implemented a full suite of retail systems in record time,
including Apple-compatible point-of-sale and back-office systems,
as well as innovative mobile point-of-sale applications.
With a philosophy of implementing primarily purchased packages,
and homegrown solutions only where strategically advantageous,
the IT organization consistently delivers high value solutions to
Apple’s business.
O’Connor joined Apple in 1991, and shortly thereafter assumed full
responsibility for the IT function’s global application development
efforts.
Prior to this, he served as a System Consultant at Eurolink, where
he was a Project Manager for numerous large system implementations, including Apple Japan’s first Enterprise Resource Planning
(ERP) system.
When in Ireland, he held management positions in IT at Homedica
in Limerick, and Westinghouse in Shannon.
O’Connor has over 25 years of experience in the technology industry. He received his degree in Computer Science from the National
Institute for Higher Education in Co. Limerick.
N
and Vantage Media.
O’Driscoll is actively looking
for new investments that take
advantage of the emerging
trends in enterprise software
(open source, SaaS, and
cloud), in mobile (smart
devices, HTML 5.0 and 4G)
and the Internet (social and
everything).
Prior to ScaleVP, O’Driscoll
was a founder and CEO of a
manufacturing company in
the U.K.
O’Driscoll holds a BSc from
the London School of
Economics. He is a winner of
the Always on VC 100 list for
2009.
3/22/11
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JOHN O’FARRELL
OHN O’Farrell is a general partner at Andreessen
Horowitz, a Silicon Valley
venture capital firm.
Prior to joining Andreessen
Horowitz, O’Farrell held
Executive Vice President
positions at Silver Spring
Networks, Opsware and
Excite@Home.
Earlier in his career, O’Farrell
worked in the U.S. and
Europe with MediaOne
Group/US WEST, Booz
Allen, eircom (Ireland), the
EU Commission, Digital
Equipment and Siemens.
O’Farrell earned an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of
Business, where he graduated as an Arjay Miller Scholar, and a
bachelor of electronic engineering from University College Dublin,
where he graduated with first class honors.
O’Farrell speaks English, German, French and Portuguese.
J
BARRY O’SULLIVAN
ARRY O’Sullivan is
Senior Vice
President of Cisco’s
Global Voice
Technology group
which had sales of
over $2 billion last year.
He splits his time
between San Jose and
Galway, and in his time
helped the company
grow from number six
to the number one
market share position
worldwide in enterprise
communications.
O’Sullivan is a co-founder of the ITLG, an independent group
of Irish and Irish American senior technology executives in
Silicon Valley.
O’Sullivan served on the Irish government’s Innovation
Taskforce and also serves on the board of Cope, an Irish
charitable organization focused on reducing isolation and
homelessness.
O’Sullivan holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering
and a master’s degree in computer science from the National
University of Ireland, as well as a master’s degree in business
administration from Santa Clara University in California.
PATRICK O’MALLEY
ATRICK J. O’Malley is the
and Chief Financial Officer of
Seagate. He has served in
these positions since August
of 2008.
Previously, he served as
Senior Vice President, Finance
from 2005 to August 2008,
and assumed the additional
roles of Principal Accounting
Officer and Treasurer in 2006.
Prior to that, he was Senior
Vice President, Consumer
Electronics from 2004 to 2005; Senior Vice President, Finance,
Manufacturing from 1999 to 2004; Vice President, Finance-Recording
Media from 1997 to 1999; Senior Director Finance, Desktop Design,
from 1996 to 1997; Senior Director, Finance, Oklahoma City Operations
from 1994 to 1996; Director/Manager, Corporate Financial Planning
and Analysis from 1991 to 1994; Manager, Consolidations and Cost
Accounting from 1990 to 1991; Manager, Consolidations from 1988 to
1990; and Senior Financial Analyst in 1988.
Prior to joining Seagate, O’Malley spent four years as a senior staff
accountant for Arthur Young & Co.
O’Malley holds a bachelor of business administration degree from the
University of Notre Dame, class of 1984.
P
CATHAL PHELAN
B
ATHAL Phelan is an
and Chief Technical Officer at
Cypress Semiconductor Corp.
He is focused on driving the
company’s transition from a
broadline chip maker to a
provider of system-level solutions.
In 2006, Phelan became the
CEO at Ubicom, a Silicon
Valley startup building a highperformance RISC processor.
He rejoined Cypress in 2008.
From 1991-2005, Phelan held
numerous positions at Cypress, starting in the SRAM design group and
advancing to Executive Vice President of the Data Communications Division.
Prior to Cypress, he was a SRAM designer at Philips Research in Eindhoven,
Holland for six years. He holds 37 U.S. patents.
Phelan graduated from Trinity College with a B.A.I. (1984) and a MSEE
(1985).
He has been married for nearly 25 years to another Trinity graduate, Nicola
MacMahon, has one horse loving, 10-year-old daughter Maeve, and is to be
found most weekends climbing a Bay Area hill on his Trek bicycle.
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DR. JAMES
G. SHANAHAN
JOHN RYAN
BY LISA JACKSON
R. James G. Shanahan has spent the last 20 years developing and
researching cutting-edge information management systems to harness information retrieval, linguistics and machine learning.
During the summer of 2007, he started a boutique consultancy, Church
and Duncan Group Inc. (CaDGi), in San Francisco. CaDGi’s major goal
is to help companies leverage their vast repositories of data using statistics, machine learning, optimization theory and data mining for applications in areas such as web search, online advertising and mobile
services.
The firm’s clients include AT&T Interactive, Digg.com, eBay,
SearchMe.com, Ancestry.com, MyOfferPal.com, and SkyGrid.com.
In addition, since January 2008, Shanahan has been affiliated with the
University of California at Santa Cruz. He advises several high-tech
startups in the Silicon Valley Area. He is also an executive in residence
at the Irish Innovation Center in San Jose.
Prior to starting Church and Duncan Group Inc., Shanahan was Chief
Scientist and executive team member at Turn Inc., an online ad network
D
OHN Ryan was born in Tipperary Town. His career began
as a technician with RTE in Dublin, and then with Yorkshire
Television in the United Kingdom before moving with his wife
and 15-month-old daughter to Silicon Valley in 1974.
In California, Ryan worked for International Video Corporation
designing television cameras. He went on to run the
research and development center for television camera
design with the Ampex Corporation.
Ryan believes that being Irish in the Valley at the time did not
hamper his career. “It’s completely neutral. They don’t care
where you came from or where you’re going. It’s not an
advantage and it’s not a disadvantage either.”
In 1983 the opportunity arose for Ryan to establish his own
company, which he called Macrovision Corporation. He
invented Macrovision’s core video copy protection technology. The company provided solutions for software, entertainment and information content to the entertainment industry.
Macrovision evolved with changing technology and, in July
2009, re-branded as Rovi Corporation to reflect its growth
into a digital entertainment technology leader.
Ryan is now retired from his previous positions as CEO and
Chairman of Macrovision.
He sees Silicon Valley as holding onto its position as the epicenter of high tech business. “Despite the fact that there are
many ‘Silicon Valleys’ throughout the world, the original one is
still the best one by far and most of the action is still there,”
he feels.
Within the Valley, John says the ITLG, “has a very good
position with great ties to major Valley companies, venture
capital companies, law firms and the like to help Irish entrepreneurs who come to the Valley to start their businesses, or
those who wish to stay in Ireland to make connections in the
Valley.
“I think ITLG will provide a great bridge to Irish entrepreneurs
by virtue of its position there.”
J
and demand side platform.
Prior to joining Turn, Shanahan was Principal Research Scientist at
Clairvoyance Corporation, where he led the “Knowledge Discovery from
Text” group. Before that he was a Research Scientist at Xerox Research
Center Europe. In the early nineties, he worked on the AI Team within
the Mitsubishi Group in Tokyo.
Shanahan has published six books, over 50 research publications, and
15 patents in the areas of machine learning and information processing.
He was General Chair for CIKM 2008. He will co-chair the International
Conference in Weblog and Social Media (ICWSM) 2011 in Barcelona.
Previously Shanahan co-organized workshops on online advertising at
SIGIR and NIPS. He is regularly invited to give talks at international conferences and universities around the world.
Shanahan received a Ph.D. in engineering mathematics from the
University of Bristol, U.K., and holds a bachelor of science degree from
the University of Limerick. He is a EU Marie Curie fellow and member of
IEEE and ACM.
3/22/11
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JACINTA TOBIN
ACINTA Tobin is Senior Vice
President, Worldwide Sales and
Business Development for
Cloudmark Inc., a messaging security company protecting over 1.6 billion
subscribers globally with customers
such as AT&T, MySpace, Microsoft,
Comcast and Time Warner.
As head of sales and business
development since 2004, Tobin has
grown company revenues by 10
times, securing a leadership position for Cloudmark in its industry. She
also serves on the board of the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group, a
global organization that promotes cooperation between the world’s
largest service providers and mobile operators to fight messaging abuse.
A graduate of Dublin City University, Tobin has over 20 years experience
in leading global sales and marketing for high technology companies.
She started her career in sales in 1990 with Kindle Systems in Dublin,
now part of Mysis Group, and then moved to the Cap Gemini Group,
driving international sales across Europe, Asia Pacific and the U.S.
Since 2000 Tobin has helped various software companies drive their
global expansion from the San Francisco Bay Area.
J
NIALL WALL
BY TOM MURPHY
IALL Wall has lived in the Silicon Valley
area for about 17 years. He graduated from
NUI Galway in 1988 and acquired an MBS in
marketing the following year.
After working for four years for DEC in Galway he
joined Oracle and moved to the U.S. He
remained at Oracle for five years doing product
management and marketing.
Wall joined Symantec nine years ago and worked
in the area of business development and
alliances . This included developing entry strategies for moving into new
market areas.
For roughly the last three years he has been running the cloud services
user group under the Norton brand.
“In tech, when it comes to intellectual horsepower, capital, VC money,
N
MICHAEL WALSH
ICHAEL Walsh has 20 years of technology and financial services
experience. He was named President and Chief Executive Officer of
CyberSource on January 1, 2010, after serving five successful years as
the company’s Senior Vice President of Worldwide Sales.
In that capacity, Walsh was responsible for the company’s sales, global
services, and CyberSource Ltd. operations in Europe and Asia.
Walsh joined CyberSource in 1998, and was promoted through increasing levels of responsibility. In 2004, he was named to CyberSource’s
M
LORRAINE TWOHILL
ORRAINE Twohill is the Vice
President, Global Marketing for
Google. She joined Google in
2003 and is responsible for the
company’s marketing efforts globally.
Her team’s marketing programs
focus on the go-to-market strategy and adoption of all of Google’s
products, from consumer offerings
to business services, across the
globe. Previously, she built and led
all of Google’s regional marketing
teams and activities in Europe, the
Middle East and Africa.
Twohill has 18 years experience in marketing. Before joining Google, she
built and led the marketing team for Opodo, the European travel portal created by nine of Europe’s airlines. She led the launch of the company across
Europe, bringing it to a top three position in all launch markets within two
years.
A native of Co. Carlow, Twohill holds a joint honors degree in international
marketing and languages from Dublin City University.
L
use of new technologies and so on there is no
better place in the world to be than in Silicon
Valley,” he says.
“It is imperative for Irish companies to have one of
their first bases in Silicon Valley.”
He sees the ITLG as being a vital conduit for talent.
“We get propositioned by companies all over the
world pretty much every week. But when I see an
Irish startup or an emerging Irish company and it is
through the ITLG, I will basically pause and make a
concerted effort to take a double look at whatever
the particular opportunity is and if I can help, I will.”
Many of the ITLG members “still have family in
Ireland,” Wall says. “We have a very positive disposition to all things Irish.
You are always going to look out for your own.”
The formal and credible referral structure of the ITLG provides a more
focused facility for Irish companies who are visiting or who are trying to
generate business or contacts in the Bay Area, he feels.
highest sales position.
Prior to CyberSource,
Walsh held sales and
business development
positions at Oracle
Corporation and Merrill
Lynch.
He holds a bachelor’s
degree in political science from the University
of California at Irvine.
21-PWC-Cyber
3/21/11
7:19 PM
Page 1
22-24Barrett Interview
3/21/11
6:20 PM
Page 1
THE BARRETT FACTOR
Craig Barrett.
Craig Barrett has been compared to Steve
Jobs of Apple in terms of his influence on
the development of the semi-conductor.
He was at the helm of Intel from 1998 to
2009 as CEO and later chairman during a
time of incredible growth and expansion in
the semiconductor field.
Despite all his remarkable achievements,
Barrett hews to a simple philosophy of
“innovate or die,” and he has proven
his incredible ability as an innovator
time and again.
Deeply proud of his Irish heritage, Barrett
oversaw Intel’s massive expansion into
Ireland where it is now one of the largest
employers. As part of his continuing involvement with Ireland he became chairman of
the ITLG, and has led delegations to Ireland
to advise on Silicon Valley investment there.
Irish America magazine founding publisher
Niall O’Dowd recently spoke with Barrett.
Niall O’Dowd: Just wanted to ask you first, any advice for the new Irish
government?
Craig Barrett: Well, firstly that the world hasn’t changed, only the government.
N O’D: This is true.
CB: And I mean, the issues that Ireland faces are the issues the United
State faces — tough economic times. I am hopeful there will be some
degree of continuity in terms of investment in the future, in education, in training.
N O’D: Right. Obviously Intel is a huge player in Ireland, and the recent
investment there is a huge bright spot. What was it that made Ireland so
attractive to Intel?
CB: Well, initially there were a number of things. We have to go back in to
the 1990s time frame and if you recall the European Union was getting very
proactive and seeking people to bring manufacturing plants into the EU. Intel
looked around at that time, and Europe was and is a big market for Intel so
it was a logical place to put a manufacturing plant.
Ireland won out over the others for a variety of reasons. Those were the
cost of doing business, some form of the English language being spoken or
the American language being spoken there (laughs), a low corporate tax rate
and a few other things.
N O’D: Right.
CB: But they were a well-educated populace, business friendly government and a market place in the EU for Intel products.
N O’D: You mentioned recently that many of the reasons you originally
invested in Ireland were not there anymore. Do you think that’s still case, or
what does Ireland need to do to address that?
CB: Well, you know, Ireland grew on the back of foreign direct investment
from companies like Intel, allowing basically the Irish middle class to earn a
good living. Increased competition has come from other countries for those
jobs in the way of government incentives, in the way of increased educational capability, in the way of the cost of doing business, and so Ireland, which
once stood out, has a lot more competition in all of those areas.
You know, the recent investment is really I think indicative of Intel’s very
positive experience and a well-trained work force and an established infrastructure.
N O’D Right.
CB: So there are kind of two questions you have to ask yourself, and that
is, if you were doing a green field investment where would you go, and if you
already have an established, well-trained work force — and not having to
train those people is key — would you continue to invest where you are?
That’s what’s driven Intel’s recent investments. You may have seen not
only just in Ireland but in the U.S. in some of their sites, Arizona and Oregon,
they’ve also announced significant investments. Those are heavily driven by
the established work force, a well-trained work force and the fact that, you
know, three or six months delay in a project because of having to train the
workforce surely is a difference between being competitive and not competitive!
N O’D: On recent trips to Ireland — I know that you’ve been over with
the ITLG — what have you sensed about the people there? Obviously the
recession has hit them very hard, but do you sense they have the capability
to come back?
CB: Well, I been very positively impressed by things going on in the uni-
R
new Irish
e govern-
he United
be some
n, in train-
he recent
eland so
back in to
tting very
EU. Intel
or Intel so
were the
poken or
e tax rate
y governoriginally
case, or
vestment
to earn a
for those
ducationnd, which
tel’s very
hed infra-
and that
and if you
having to
ou are?
seen not
Oregon,
driven by
that, you
train the
compet-
over with
ously the
capability
n the uni-
3/21/11
6:20 PM
Page 2
N O’D: Tell me a little about her.
versities, the entrepreneurial efforts, the ability and attempts to do tech
CB: Well what I can tell you is as a young lady she lived in Cookstown,
transfers out of the universities rather than the more ivory towered
approach in other educational institutions. I like the fact that they are kind Northern Ireland.
N O’D: What was her maiden name?
of copying the western model, the Stanford, MIT model in that respect.
CB: Mary Martha Eccles, a Protestant as it happens. She met her husN O’D: Do you think that the new government promising much better
band, my grandfather, who was apparently a Russian sea man of sorts
broadband service is also critical?
CB: Well, you look at the three things I think that are important for eco- who stopped off somewhere in Ireland, and they met.
There is not a lot of information on this, but somehow they emigrated
nomic development in the 21st century. One is clearly the well educated
workforce and Ireland is re-dedicating itself to that, especially to get more separately to the United States, met up here and got married and settled
in San Francisco. They changed their name from his Russian name to
young kids interested in math and science and engineering.
The second is the investment in ideas, and that’s kind of the R&D invest- Walters, which was just, I think, an adopted name.
I was born a Walters but I became a
ment. I think that Science
Barrett by an indirect route. Walters was the
Foundation Ireland has been
family name here in the United States.
doing a good job.
N O’D: Do you remember your grandYou know, that’s why I said the
mother?
government has changed but the
CB: Oh very vaguely.
needs haven’t. The government’s
N O’D: When did she pass?
continued willingness to invest in
CB: The late 1930s.
Science Foundation Ireland, I
N O’D: What do you think the potential
think, is key because that’s where
is for the ITLG?
the new ideas and new compaCB: It’s a very fine organization. Well,
nies and new jobs are going to
you know, one of the things that’s going on
come from.
not just in Ireland but around the world is
And then the third thing I think is
this image of what the 21st century looks
important is the environment. The
like for strong economies and economic
environment is everything from Craig Barrett and John Hartnett attend the third annual ITLG
growth.
your tax rates to your IT, infrastruc- Technology Leaders Awards at Stanford University, March 2010.
Everyone, you know, comes down and
ture, et cetera. Putting that IT infrastructure in place, I think, can be key, as well as keeping competitive in looks at Silicon Valley or Route 128 around Boston, the areas where innovation and entrepreneurship has flourished, and so the ITLG is really a
terms of tax rates and incentives to make investments.
N O’D: Do you think that an increase in the corporate tax rate would model of, let’s take some of the Irish entrepreneurs who are in Silicon Valley
and see how you can translate that capability, that enthusiasm, that expecause a major problem for Ireland?
CB: Well, I think you just have to ask yourself if you were the CEO of a rience back in to Ireland.
So you see the CEOs, the young Irish entrepreneurs, going back to
company and you had the choice of putting the plant here or there, and
the difference between a high tax environment and low tax environment Ireland to oversee the setup of a facility in San Jose to bring Irish entreprewas about a billion dollars, how would you go to your shareholders and neurs over here to work their business plan in the U.S. environment, where
say, ‘Because my grandmother was from Ireland I’m gonna take a billion you have a much larger economy.
You see this fertilization attempting to happen, and this is the way for the
dollars away from you?’
It’s not an easy battle. So, of course, as I said, there are other mediating future. You need to understand how to be an entrepreneur, how to be an
factors because if you have an established institution and an established innovator, how to use your education in the marketplace, and Irish technolworkforce and an established capability, that may trump in the near-term ogy leaders in the Silicon Valley are trying to bring that experience back
home.
tax rates and things of that sort.
N O’D: How do you think it is going so far?
But, long-term, you can be pretty much guaranteed what’s happening.
CB: I think if you look at the business competitions, the annual awards,
All you have to do is look at the U.S., and the U.S. is currently debating this
issue of having the highest, one of the highest, corporate tax rates in the if you look at the annual visits back and forth I think you see definite
progress. It’s not a rapid process.
world, I think the second highest behind Japan.
One of the most difficult things in the world is when people trying to copy
And the government wonders why people are not investing in the United
States? Come on, it’s pretty straightforward!
the Silicon Valley experience and make it flourish elsewhere – well, it is not
N O’D: In terms of your connection with the ITLG, what motivated you to a formulaic thing where you just say, all right, if you do A, B, C and D it hapbecome involved with the group?
pens.
CB: Well, two things really. One is having been in and around Ireland and
It requires everything from great educational institutions, the venture
doing business there with Intel for 20 years, and seeing the success the capabilities, the right government attitude and also the right cultural/sociecompany had and the success think it has with the Irish community. I have tal attitude.
a positive feeling.
N O’D: Yes, of course.
The second is kind of a family tie back to my grandmother. She came
CB: And, you know, these little things you have in Ireland – like, you
from Ireland to the United States in the early 1900s.
know, if you borrow money to start a business and you go bankrupt, are
SILICONVALLEY50 l APRIL2011 23\
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Page 3
you able to clear your name and your finances by declaring bankruptcy, or weren’t doing at the time but other people were, and we applied ourselves
do the creditors have a call on you for the next 12 years or so? I mean, lit- with a kind of liberal dose of common sense and engineering fundamentals.
tle things like that. People are taking a chance there!
We said, if somebody else can do this we can do it. Then we just did
So, you know, these things have to grow. I’m actually working right now
with the Russians who are trying to do the exact same thing outside what I think you always have to do when you are trying to improve. You just
continue to set your expectation levels at a higher and higher and higher
Moscow. They are trying to create a Silicon Valley lookalike.
Now, you know, the Russians have a slightly different model, which is level. You can only say we can be better, we can become more efficient,
you put four big walls up around the city, and you declare this wall to be and we were.
Intel dedicated itself to that as well. Obviously, we continue to invest
the city of innovation and tell people to go there and to be innovators, and
heavily in research and development to create
so they are struggling a bit with this.
new technology.
I think the Irish and Russians are trying to draw
You need a great education to be able to do
on other people’s experience, and they are very
this stuff. You need to have the high expectawilling to listen to what needs to be done and so
tion levels, you need to invest in the research
they are trying to move in that direction.
and development, and then you never are satIt’s a slog, but it’s about the only thing that estabisfied with the status quo. There’s no magic!
lished economies like Ireland and kind of like
N O’D: You moved Intel from a $50 million
Russia can do.
a year company when you joined to a $100
N O’D: How do you feel about the Irish economillion a day huge corporation. That was
my going forward? Can it recover, or does the govincredible progression. What do you see for
ernment have to take drastic actions in terms of the
the future in terms of a company like Intel?
bond holders and everything else that’s going on?
CB: I think the one constant word describCB: Well, you know, they are pretty much like the
ing the future for anybody in the tech business
United States in the gross over-speculation in real
or just about any business is “change.”
estate which put a huge bubble in the system. You
I mean, the environment is going to change,
have to pop that bubble, and people are going to
the consumer demands are going to change,
have to recognize that the fantastic growth you had
the technology is going to change. You have
the last 20 years — only probably about half of it
to be ready and adaptable, and if you look at
was legitimate growth, so you have to kind of go
what’s happened around today you can see
back 10 steps and then start again.
how fast some of the major corporations’
It’s going to require pain across the board, just
experiences have changed, yet they don’t get
like the United States has had its form of banking
it right.
crisis, its form of loss of equity in real estate, its Craig Barrett speaks to the Irish media at an economic
conference
at
Farmleigh
in
Dublin
hosted
by
I mean Motorola, which 25 years ago was
form of bankruptcy, its form of job loss.
the strongest name in communications in the
We are all paying for that greed and over spec- the Irish government in 2009.
world, has almost fallen by the wayside. Nokia today is experiencing this in
ulation of the late 1990s and 2000s.
N O’D: I have seen you compared to Steve Jobs in terms of what you smartphones and, you know, their strength was basically in the kind of the
accomplished with the microchip, and what he has done with Apple. Is that high volume analog cell phones or simple function cell phones, and all of
a sudden the iPhone came along and the world changed around that.
a comparison that you like?
Now they are struggling to catch up with other people. So you can go
CB: I think anybody would look very favorably to be compared with
Steve. I think Steve was kind of the founder of Apple, and then came back from top dog or leader of the pack to way in the back almost overnight, and
and helped resurrect it from near death with his brilliant vision of applying that’s why this expectation level, this demanding that you continue to
invest, look for change, so forth, is so important.
technology and industrial design and meeting people’s needs.
I think the important thing for countries, companies and individuals by the
We did quite a different thing at Intel. The company was never that close
to failure in the 1980s when we were competing with the Japanese, but way, because I think the same challenges are in front of everybody, is that
we were resurrecting ourselves and became a manufacturing power- you have to have the determination to compete going forward. You cannot
sit there and say, “Because I had this once I deserve this in the future.”
house, and the biggest in the world.
So the real issue is — and I read this in a Chinese fortune cookie –was,
N O’D: What’s the one key thing you did? I know you talked about how
you discovered McDonald’s French fries were all made the same all over “You cannot win unless you choose to compete.” That is for the individual,
it’s for the company, it’s for the country.
the world.
You have to decide to compete if you wan to win, and everybody wants
CB: Well, what we did was we looked at where we were getting beat up
— and it was really in the manufacturing world — and we had some very to win and everybody wants the high standard of living. Everybody wants
smart people who said, “Hey, you know, after 117 trips to Japan to see the good jobs and the growing economy. But you have to decide to comwhat they were doing there was no real secret here, just consistency, like pete, and then you have to have the consistency of effort.
N O’D: I can see that you’re an inspirational man.
McDonald’s fries.”
CB: Oh, no. I’m a retired guy who had a great time working in the high
It was just common sense — applying engineering principles to manufacturing statistical process control, all this mundane stuff which we tech field and still loves it!
25-NewFeatur
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IRELAND’S GATEWAY TO SILICON VALLEY
The Irish Innovation Center.
John Stanton, President, IIC.
(Used with permission of San Jose Mercury News Copyright© 2011)
HE Irish Innovation Center (IIC) in San Jose, California was opened
in March 2010 by the then Irish Taoiseach Brian Cowen, and was
fully operational in August.
The IIC was created as a launching pad for Irish companies to connect to the Silicon Valley ecosystem and accelerate growth. The vision
of the IIC from the very beginning has been to help companies succeed
in a meaningful way.
John Stanton, President of the IIC says, “There are a number of significant reasons why Irish companies should seriously contemplate
either a move to Silicon Valley, or setting up a base of operations here.
“First, it’s the top destination for the world’s technology talent. Second,
every major technology company is either headquartered or has a significant presence in the valley, allowing for access to strategic customers, given the top 150 companies represent $1.6 trillion in market
T
iSaf won the emerging technology award in March 2010
and has since raised $900K led by
Silicon Valley ITLG members. “If you
believe your technology is the next
big thing then ITLG’s multidisciplinary team has the expertise, contacts and capital sources to turn
your invention into success,” said Dr. Suzanne Saffie-
S
capitalization.
“Finally, Silicon Valley is the number one source of venture capital in
the world with over $7 billion invested in 2010, representing 40% of all
U.S. investment in Q4.”
One recent Silicon Valley arrival from Ireland, Danielle McCormick of
mycubi.com, stated in a recent article, “If you want to create a global
brand, you have to be in Silicon Valley.”
Even though the IIC has been in existence for just a short time, its role
in being able to help “Brand Ireland” and Irish businesses has been significant.
There are now 22 companies operating out of the IIC in a variety of
capacities. Many of these companies were previous ITLG award winners or finalists including: WaveBob, Redmere, Decawave, SiSaf, MCor
and imeeGolf.
Siebert, CEO and Founder,
SiSaf.
“Our vision from the very
beginning has been to help
companies grow and prosper in
a meaningful way. So, we will
judge our success by the number of companies we help succeed,” said Stanton.
Dr. Suzanne Saffie-Siebert.
aveBob received an initial investment of over
$500k from Silicon Valley ITLG members and has
made significant progress with continued funding of over
$5M from the U.S. Department of Energy, Bord Gais and
Chevron.
W
ecawave has successfully raised over $3M and made great
strides in the commercialization of their technology. “The ITLG,
over the course of the past two years, has significantly accelerated
our penetration of key strategic accounts and added very valuable
insight into our strategy,” said Ciaran Connell, CEO, DecaWave.
D
26-27ITLG
3/21/11
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Craig Barrett, John Hartnett and Arnold
John Hartnett, Arnold Schwarzenegger and the 2010 Technology Leaders Award nomiSchwarzenegger with a hurley at Stanford, March 2010. nees at Stanford.
Pauline Ryan, John Hartnett, Tom McEnery and Arnold
Schwarzenegger meet at Stanford.
Mark Little hosting the third annual Irish Technology Leaders Awards at Stanford
University, March 2010.
ITLG GROUP EVENTS IN 2010
BY JOHN BRESLIN
WO major events were organized by the Irish
Technology Leadership Group (ITLG) during 2010 as
part of its mission to build bridges between the Irish technology communities in Silicon Valley and in Ireland.
The first event, the Third Annual Silicon Valley Technology
Leaders Awards, took place at Stanford University in March.
It was attended by executives from both U.S. and Irish technology companies. There were senior public officials present,
including the then-Governor of California Arnold
Schwarzenegger.
The event coincided with the opening of the Irish Innovation
Center in downtown San Jose. Commenting on these events,
Governor Schwarzenegger said, “For you to come over here
and to open this center in San Jose, and to bring 75 people
over here — business leaders from Ireland — and to form
partnerships… This is what it’s all about.”
The main 2010 ITLG/Irish Times Innovation Award was
awarded to RedMere, a Dublin-based company founded in
2004 whose primary product is a semiconductor device that
boosts the performance of ultra-thin HDMI cables (HDMI is
a cabling interface for connecting multimedia devices).
T
Peter Smyth, CEO of RedMere, said, “We are honored to
receive this award. RedMere’s active cable solution currently
has fast growing market traction. This award reaffirms the
innovation and market potential for [our] chip technology.”
The Most Promising Technology Award was given to
Belfast-based SiSaf, developers of innovative nano-particle
technologies for deeper drug delivery through the dermal
layer.
Bill McKiernan, the founder of electronic payment and risk
management company CyberSource, also received an honorary award at the event.
Commenting on the awards, John Hartnett, Founder of the
ITLG, said, “It is very rewarding to see Redmere and SiSaf
being recognized for their success. Innovation is vital, and
Ireland’s technology companies continue to offer great promise both in their home markets and on the international stage.”
The second ITLG event was the Third Annual Silicon Valley
Comes to Ireland event. It took place in Limerick in November
and was organized in partnership with the University of
Limerick, the National University of Ireland, Galway and
Shannon Development.
26-27ITLG
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Page 2
John Hartnett and Craig Barrett visit Thomond Park in
Limerick.
John Hartnett, Dr. Guido Mariotto and Craig Barrett at t he ITLG University of
Limerick event, November 2010.
John Ryan speaks at the ITLG University of Limerick
event.
Craig Barrett, John Ryan, Tom McEnery, Bill McKiernan, Martina Newell-McGloughlin
and Richard Moran at the University of Limerick, November 2010.
The ITLG brought more than 20 seasoned Silicon Valley
technologists and venture capitalists (VCs) to engage with
and advise Irish technology companies.
Twelve of these companies were selected to participate in
private workshops with members from the delegation.
A crowded house had the opportunity to listen to three
panel discussions — Ireland and the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead; mobile and the vast possibilities that
are available in that space; and a discussion by VCs on how
venture capital works.
In the Irish panel, ITLG Chairman and former Intel CEO
Craig Barrett spoke about the global recession, and said that
the challenges we face are really our opportunities.
“Those companies and those countries that invest their way
out of recession will come out the other side in much better
condition. Don’t try and save your way out of a recession –
invest your way out.”
The mobile panel made it clear that this technology area is
one where major opportunities lie for future development.
About a fifth of all cell phones in use are smart phones.
However, a rather starker statistic revealed that more people have access to cell phones than clean water. The playing
field is still wide open, so the advice from the panel members
was for budding entrepreneurs to go for it.
The final panel of VCs gave some useful tips to attendees,
including the fact that there is no single catch-all approach
when calling on a VC for funding. They advised that you have
to do your research and know who you are going to be talking to, since something that would intrigue one VC may make
another’s eyes glaze over.
“They [VCs] tend to stick to their knitting”, said Robert
Simon from Ariva Partners.
Craig Barrett gave a keynote talk during the visit about the
relationship between research universities and the private
sector. He cited the disruptive technology companies that
came out of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
(Netscape) and Stanford (Yahoo!, Google), and notably the
effect they had on Microsoft.
Barrett said, “How did graduate students with a research
budget of a fifty or a hundred thousand dollars challenge a
major corporation with a research budget of more than seven
billion dollars?
“The only conclusion that you can arrive at is that the idea,
the individual idea, is immensely powerful and immensely
valuable.”
To help companies extend beyond their comfort zones and
existing product lines, Barrett said, “There’s a huge role here
for research universities to move forward, to bring new ideas
into the marketplace, to feed the entrepreneurs of society
and to create wealth and jobs.”
“Frankly, that is the only way that Ireland will compete in the
future.”
28-New Tech Post
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Page 1
ALL THE NEWS WITH THE NEW TECH POST
BY JOHN BRESLIN
OR a couple of years leading up to the summer of
2010, John Breslin, an engineering lecturer and
Semantic Web researcher at the National University of
Ireland, Galway, ran a blog called socialmedia.net which
posted occasional articles on varied subjects surrounding
new technologies.
In July 2010, socialmedia.net began publishing a regular
daily newsfeed of articles. The stories being produced on a
regular basis centered around new and innovative ideas in
the online social media space.
In February 2011, after seven months in operation, socialmedia.net was rebranded as New Tech Post.
The change in name reflected the publication’s continuallyexpanding coverage of new areas of innovative and emerging technologies. The main newsfeed now has five new subfeeds: Video; Mobile; Business; Technology; and retains
Social Media as a sub-feed.
New Tech Post plans to open a new office in the Irish
Innovation Center in San Jose, creating a “news bridge”
between its headquarters in Galway and the U.S.
The main aim of New Tech Post is to cover emergent technologies and share new, innovative ideas with an audience
interested in learning what future trends to think about, and
how they might be affected by them.
Technologies that are sometimes obscure and difficult to
decipher are explained in such a manner that an average
reader can explain the essential ideas with ease and facility
to a third party not familiar with the area: to their boss, coworker, friend and so on.
Natural areas of activity are innovations and ideas emerging
from large companies such as Cisco and HP, as well as the
bubbling undercurrents of startups and early-stage ventures.
With its origins in Ireland, one goal of
New Tech Post is to promote Irish technology wherever possible, in the belief
that Irish companies and entrepreneurs
are on the same footing as other international contributors when it comes to technology, business and innovation.
Some of the tech leaders interviewed on
New Tech Post during its first six months
include Carlos Dominguez (Cisco), Dylan
Collins (Jolt Online), Andrew Parish
(Wavebob), Nova Spivack (Live Matrix),
Bernardo Huberman (HP Labs) and Iain
MacDonald (SkillPages).
A varied set of topics are covered on New Tech Post,
including pervasive computing and mobile networking; how
to measure influence on Twitter; similarities between neurons
and social networks; robots learning from their environment;
and solar technologies for harvesting light.
Since 2010, the site has built up a steady readership of
F
John Breslin.
about 5,000 visitors per month, and clocked up over
250,000 total article reads.
The team behind New Tech Post is John Breslin and Tom
Murphy.
Apart from his academic credentials,
Breslin is a co-founder of Boards.ie,
Ireland’s largest community website with
over 2.3 million visitors per month. He
started Boards.ie as a computer games
forum in 1998.
Breslin is also a co-founder of
StreamGlider, Inc. StreamGlider is a
breakthrough iPad app for tracking personal interests.
Murphy is a producer and cameraperson
for over 20 years filming in many different
environments throughout the world, specializing in current
affairs and documentaries with ABC Nightline, CBS and
many more.
He is an award-winning journalist, winning a Polk Award for
his secret filming in Burma.
You can visit the site at: www.newtechpost.com.
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30-Ireland'sFuture
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IRELAND: WHATBY THE
FUTURE
HOLDS
TOM MURPHY
F all the countries that have suffered during the recent recession,
it would be fair to say that Ireland in particular has had a very hard
time. But Ireland has survived, somewhat battered and bruised perhaps,
but still in the game, still able to fight.
Despite the hardships of recent years, the gloom is lifting. There are
good reasons to look at what the future holds with optimism and a
renewed sense of vigor and purpose.
There have already been intimations from European bankers and politicians that the terms for the loans provided in the so-called “bailout” are
open for further discussion and renegotiation.
What new deal may be arrived at from these conversations is open to
conjecture at the moment. However, the underlying message that is being
sent out is clear and pragmatic — no one benefits from a crippled Irish
economy. We want you to grow and we believe that you can grow.
The question then becomes: Is this belief justified? The answer has to
be an overwhelming “yes.”
Technology: Ireland has a huge advantage in terms of global trade in
that the most important sector for growth a country can have — the tech
sector — is growing.
According to Information and Communications
Technology (ICT) Ireland, over 75,000 people are
employed in the ICT area which is responsible for
approximately 25% of Ireland’s total turnover, and represents one-third of Ireland’s exports by value.
Employment alone has grown by 6% in this area this
past year, and there is still the promise of more to come.
Ireland’s tech sector is extraordinarily well-placed to
take advantage of the opportunities that are available.
In addition, there is a real sense that there is a technological and entrepreneurial culture springing to life in the country.
Paddy Cosgrave hosts the Dublin Web Summit (DWS). It takes place
roughly every four months to ensure that as many people as possible can
avail themselves of the freshest thinking on the newest topics in tech.
The DWS has established itself internationally as an important venue
for thought leaders, founders of companies such as Twitter and YouTube,
and leading investors to share their ideas and experience.
Startup Weekends take place globally around the world. People come
together with ideas and skills on a Friday. They form themselves into teams
and then 54 hours later something feasible is produced.
In the first event in Dublin last year, sponsored by the National Digital
Research Center, an organization dedicated to the commercialization of
academic innovations and ideas, half the projects that were worked on
over the weekend went on to become real-life companies.
This is by far the most successful conversion rate for turning ideas into
reality compared to other similar events around the world.
Education: Ireland has roughly half the population of New York City, but
has nine major universities and numerous regional institutes of technology. Almost a fifth of the population has completed third-level education
either to graduate or vocational diploma level.
Contrast this figure with Ireland’s nearest neighbor, the U.K., with only
15% of its population having completed tertiary education. The absolute
numbers may be higher in larger countries, but the density and consequent critical mass of intellectual talent in Ireland is much deeper and is
O
disproportionate to the size of the country.
Research: In addition, there are a number of world-leading academic
research institutes in Ireland. One example is DERI (Digital Enterprise
Research Institute) based in the National University of Ireland, Galway
where the Semantic Web is being designed and built.
There is also the TSSG (Telecommunications Software and Systems
Group) at the Waterford Institute of Technology where research work is
being carried out to improve Ireland’s telecoms networks.
But unlike a lot of research institutes, there is a heavy emphasis on the
commercialization of the work.
It is not at all unusual for a TSSG researcher to spin out technology
that he or she has been working on into a commercial venture and still
remain on campus.
As Barry Downes, TSSG Executive Director of Innovation and
Commercialization describes it, “What we are doing is leveraging knowledge and technologies that we have to directly work for an Irish company
that can improve their product line or enhance their competitiveness.
“We do research, we do development and then we give the technology to the company. If you are a startup, your preference
is going to be assignment obviously. I think this is reflecting the needs of startups.
“If you’re a company and you engage with us, you
want to own the tech at the end. You don’t want to
license it. So we spent quite a bit of time working
through our Technology Transfer Office developing standardized agreements so the tech can just be assigned
out.”
The immediate net effect of this generous stance is to
create an ecosystem where ideas developed in academia can be subjected to immediate testing in the market place.
Quality of Life: Apart from the somewhat unpredictable weather,
Ireland consistently comes very high or near the top of quality of life indexes as being a great place to live and work.
According to the Human Development Index published by the UN
Development Program last November, Ireland is one of the top five countries in the world, along with Norway, Australia, New Zealand and the
United States to call home.
Around the same time, the World Bank released a report that Ireland is
still one of the top ten countries in the world to do business with.
What all this tells us is that, despite the recent economic ravages,
Ireland’s foundations are absoluately solid and provide an excellent springboard for future economic growth.
With such a richly-developing tech sector, a natural evolution would be
to develop a much stronger presence in the world center for innovation
and technological development – Silicon Valley.
Fortunately, there are organizations like the Irish Technology Leadership
Group (ITLG) that are set up to do exactly that.
The ITLG is “committed to promoting the technology connection
between Ireland and Silicon Valley, and helping Ireland address the challenges of embracing new technology opportunities.”
It is clear that in moving forward, Ireland has the capability and the
means. All that remains is the will. It seems that will not be in short supply
either.
31-Microsoft-DFA
3/21/11
7:20 PM
Page 1
32-Airpos 36-McCorTech
3/22/11
1:27 PM
Page 1
AIRPOS IS RIGHT ON POINT
BY TOM MURPHY
ARTIN Neill began his working life as a music journalist
for the New Musical Express and The Guardian newspaper. He called time on his journalism career when he found
himself becoming more fascinated with websites and the
potential of the Internet.
He started his own business in 2003 specializing in ecommerce and online selling. It became clear to him that retailers
needed to integrate their website activity with their business
processes.
The classic model for point-of-sale (POS) operations is that a
hardware manufacturer would make the hardware. Then, there
would be a software vendor who would piggyback on the hardware. On top of that, there would be a network of dealers that
go out, sell and install the POS apparatus.
Neill realized that there had to be a better way of doing this, so
he started AirPOS, which began originally as a little side project
and mushroomed from there.
Timing, as always, was very important. Cloud computing with
its advantages of timely updates, real-time backup and freeing
the end user from nearly all of the application maintenance
chores, was becoming more prevalent and more accessible as
a platform.
So, from day one AirPOS was built in the Cloud. “What we set
out to do was cut out all the middle points in the point-of-sale
industry, although we utilize those if we need to,” Neill says.
“We are creating a disruptive model: on the hardware that you
currently have, in 90% of cases you would be able to install
AirPOS directly. That is the software suppliers and the dealer
network bypassed.
“Therefore we can provide a very affordable point-of-sale solution to retailers with all the benefits of it being web-based.”
AirPOS is based in Belfast, Northern Ireland, which Neill does
not necessarily see as being a handicap. “Software as a service (SaaS) can be done anywhere. So being in Ireland, from that
point of view, shouldn’t be an impediment when it comes to raising investment,” he says.
“When it comes to building something as quickly as possible and scaling as quickly as possible, then there
are places where that might happen
quicker, but things are getting better.”
Neill goes on to say that there are a
few differences between how things
are done in the U.S. and how they are
done in Ireland. “Americans are very
accustomed to the risks involved when
dealing with small software companies,” he said.
“The people in Ireland aren’t so accustomed. They haven’t
seen the big successes. But using Silicon Valley as a model for
M
Martin Neill.
Irish entrepreneurs, it becomes simply a matter of ironing out the
kinks and cultural disconnects.”
To help further iron out these kinks
and develop better connections, Neill
says, “Coming to the awards ceremony is a wonderful PR opportunity.
“Every time we come across the
people that are part of the ITLG and
the technology leaders that are associated with it, we get rigorously challenged.
“We certainly learn a lot from these
people, even if we spend only two
hours with them. You get a good
going over in every aspect of the
business.
“For us, the PR opportunity is wonderful, but the feedback and
direction from some of the leaders in Silicon Valley is invaluable.”
33-IMEE Golf
3/21/11
6:36 PM
Page 1
VISUALIZING SUCCESS
WITH
IMEEGOLF
BY CONOR HARRINGTON
John McGuire.
OHN McGuire hails from Co. Galway. He obtained his
degree in information technology and telecoms at the
University of Limerick.
He paid his way through college by coaching members of
the sports faculty in visualization techniques. He could train
sports men and women to create winning match scenarios
and enable them to model themselves on superior athletes by
having them use the power of their imaginations.
Later on in his working career while working at Nortel, he
retrained as a sports psychologist.
McGuire recalls, “I set up a clinic in Galway, working mostly
with athletes, and that got to a stage where I was going in at
five in the morning, then at 8:30 a.m. I would go into Nortel.
After leaving work at 5 p.m., I would then be in the clinic up
until midnight working with Galway hurlers and footballers.
“It got to the stage where I had professional ballerinas coming over from the U.K. When that happened, I decided to leave
Nortel.”
His current company, Active Mind Technology, has within it a
vertical brand called imeeGolf (imee stands for improvement
made even easier).
McGuire explains, “We’re basically developing technology
that collects data. Now that can be in any area, it can be in
sport, it can be anything, but we’ve chosen sport because of
my background, and we’ve chosen golf because of the demographic.
“It’s a more affluent, wealthy demographic. There’s a large
market size with a large typical spend. It’s a very, very attractive demographic.”
To prepare himself better for business McGuire enrolled in the
Endeavour Program, which is a
two-stage program running in both
Dublin and Kerry. In the first stage
participants develop their business
J
ideas. A subset of these projects go on to the second stage
where they receive intense mentoring and coaching over a
period of months.
One of the founders of the Endeavour Program is Jerry
Kennelly, who introduced McGuire to Liam Casey of PCH
International. Illustrating the importance of establishing good
networks, Casey in turn introduced McGuire to John Hartnett
of the ITLG.
McGuire explains the outcome of having such links in his
network. “The way it goes for me now is that I’m a week in
Ireland, I’m four weeks over there. When I started going over
there I was staying in the Irish Innovation Center.
“They were bridging the gap from Ireland to Silicon Valley. As
well as providing an office for us, they’d sit with us during the
day, they’d work on stuff with you.”
McGuire also has some suggestions for those who may follow in his footsteps.
“There are quite a few Irish entrepreneurs out there right now
in Silicon Valley. Using social media, you can find out who
those guys are,” he says.
“It’s a very good first port of call to connect with those guys,
because they’re guys that are also raising money or have
raised money. They know what you’re going through.
“You need to develop an attitude that, no matter what, I can
get this done. You’ve got to believe in what you’re doing.
Because when you’re talking to sophisticated investors, they’ll
pick up on your body signals that you don’t believe in it.
They’re tuned from experience to go behind your words.”
34-InishTech
3/22/11
1:05 PM
Page 1
INISHTECH FOSTERS GROWTH
BY TOM MURPHY
IDAN Gallagher
has spent over 30
years in the Information
Technology
industry.
Gallagher, along with
two other founders of
InishTech,
Chief
Technology Officer John O’Sullivan and Chief Operating Officer
David Smyth, was approached by Enterprise Ireland to look at
a technology Microsoft had that they were considering licensing out.
The software in question
allows
companies
to
license their applications
and their products so they
can sell them more flexibly.
”If you developed an
application for instance,
you might want to sell it
cheaply in a cut-down version, or you want to sell the
full version at a higher cost.
We can do all that for the
software developer through
a service,” says Gallagher.
“They can basically put
license points in their software and we can control
how
it’s
used
and
accessed.
“Our clients are primarily
.NET developers, but we
have some large scale
enterprise customers as
well. They develop software
for corporate use and then
distribute it around the
world. They also want to
license it and protect their
work.
“We now have the service
up and running in Azure
which is the Microsoft
cloud platform, and we
work very closely with
Microsoft who have stayed
involved in the business as Aidan Gallagher.
shareholders.”
InishTech now has 10 staff and over 100 companies as
clients.
“What we feel from our point of view is different about
A
InishTech is
that, in a very
tough recessionary
climate, it is
increasingly
difficult for a
startup to take an idea, commercialize it, get sufficient funds
on board to do the development and the commercialization,
invest in the sales and marketing, roll it out worldwide, etc.,”
says Gallagher.
“Anything you can do
to short circuit that
process in these kind of
pressured times is going
to be an advantage.
“So, the idea of spinning out a technology
that had effectively $30
million invested in it from
Microsoft and having that
as your starting point
makes a lot of sense.
“What we’re really
doing is taking something
that is already up and
running, and the challenge now is to commercialize that and get it out
in the marketplace.”
Gallagher is looking forward to taking part in the
fourth annual Silicon
Valley
Technology
Leaders Awards.
“The ITLG for me is a
fantastic forum for us to
showcase ourselves as a
company in Silicon
Valley. It’s obviously a
group of very high-powered entrepreneurs. They
are very successful guys
with a great network of
people,” he maintains.
“It’s a way for us to
showcase the company,
accelerate access to market,
access to individuals, access to potential VCs (venture capital)
and investment and just accelerate our entry and growth in the
U.S. marketplace.”
35-Intelesens
3/22/11
1:05 PM
Page 1
INTELESENS BYEYES
U.S.
MARKET
TOM MURPHY
FTER working at a senior level at various
multinational
companies,
including
Seagate and Marconi, Michael Caulfield chose
to settle back where his family is based in his
native Belfast, Northern Ireland, and joined a
very small startup technology company that
eventually morphed into Intelesens.
Intelesens in its original form had been started
as a spin-out company by three professors from
Queen’s University Belfast (the university is a
shareholder). One of these professors, John
Anderson, is credited with developing the
world’s first portable defibrillator.
Caulfield explains, “I joined them to add my
commercial experience to, what to me, looks
like a very exciting opportunity.
“Back in 2005, we really focused our minds
and we developed a consensus to focus on
wearable wireless health monitors.
“With a degree of foresight and a willingness
to take a little bit more time to develop the product, we thought we would be able to enter the
market at exactly the right time. That is exactly
what has occurred. There is now major interest
in trying to understand this technology and how
to deploy it.”
As well as having uses inside hospitals, it can
be, just as importantly, used remotely in the
homes of patients. In addition, there are a
greater number of people who are living alone
but otherwise fine, but who would nevertheless Michael Caulfield.
like to be able to notify someone should they
FDA approval,” he says.
have a mishap.
“Although we started in Europe, it is the U.S. market that
“We are now at the exciting stage, with the technology
will
take up our technology that much more quickly. The
that we have developed, of turning it into a product for the
U.S.
is a faster-moving market we have competitors in
market. We have taken them through the European regulatory approval process. We have taken them through a which we don’t have in Europe.”
In one sense, having competitors is an advantage as
couple of very important clinical trials at major hospitals
they
help to familiarize customers with new technology. In
both in Belfast and Dublin,” says Caulfield.
another
sense, competitors could sometimes become
“We have taken huge strides and ticked an enormous
number of boxes to bring this family of products to the partners.
“There are two things that Intelesens needs to allow us
market in Europe.”
—
to realize that dream of getting Intelesens technology
Now Caulfield and his team have their eyes set on the
into
hospitals in the U.S., and chronically-ill patients at
North American market. “We have just completed a trial at
the Mass General Hospital in Boston and have filed for home in the US,” Caulfield says.
“We need investment and therefore I am keen to get my
proposition in front of potential U.S. investors.
“We also need partners to help us with routes to market.
“We could do this ourselves and our business plan
shows us being a $100 million business in five years.
However, our considered preference is to find partners
who are already in that market place.”
A
NT
32-Airpos 36-McCorTech
3/22/11
1:19 PM
Page 2
MCOR TECHNOLOGIES GOES 3D
BY TOM MURPHY
Fintan and Conor MacCormack.
ONOR MacCormack was born, bred, and still lives in Ardee in
Co. Louth. He has a primary degree in Mechanical Engineering
and a Ph.D. in finite element analysis, which involved using computer models to simulate the stress within metal structures.
It was while studying for his doctorate that he gained much exposure to the whole area of 3D printing and computer aided design.
As MacCormack says, “I had spent time when doing my Ph.D.
drawing things on a computer and getting them printed out in 3D,
and realized it was a fantastic technology, but it was really niche and
only the top universities and the top companies would have them.”
In early 2003, McCormack and his brother Fintan, who is a cofounder of Mcor Technologies, came up with the idea of building their
own 3D printer.
They realized that, apart from the capital cost of the machine, the
running costs were the real barrier to entry. “The consumables that
go into these machines would cost thousands and thousands every
year,” says McCormack.
“So we said if we could make an entry-level machine that was low
cost to run, it would have a real future. It would accelerate the adoption of this technology.”
They asked themselves what would be the lowest cost material
that could be used for 3D printing that could be bought off the shelf.
They realized that paper was a perfect material. It’s very accurately
made. It’s very precise in its thickness, and the quality doesn’t vary
much across the reams that can be bought.
“We thought that getting a 3D printer to work with A4 sheets of
paper would be a brilliant idea,” says McCormack.
C
The MacCormacks assumed that getting the machine to work and
getting the software to enable the slicing of the parts would be the
most challenging aspect, but the biggest challenge they had to overcome was trying to deposit an adhesive on to paper without the
paper blistering.
It is not possible to make a 3D product with blistered paper, so they
had to develop their own adhesive dispenser. The Mcor Technologies
intellectual property is based around this device.
In October 2008, the team released some information on their
product to some blogs that were discussing 3D printing and the
issues that were surrounding it, and there was an instant global
response.
They received over two million hits in 10 days, and had to switch
to a more capable web hosting service.
“From that point, we knew that we were onto something that people really wanted.”
The MacCormacks have decided that Mcor Technologies needs to
have a foothold in the American market.
“What the ITLG awards ceremony means to us is that it gives us
a chance to not only meet some of the VCs in Silicon Valley and
develop some potential leads for business, it also gives us the
chance to tap into the expertise of the people at the Irish Innovation
Center,” MacCormack said.
37-Movidus-38Skillpages
3/22/11
1:18 PM
Page 1
MOVIDIUS CHIPS IN FOR 3D
BY TOM MURPHY
OVIDIUS is a silicon chip company that is headquartered in Dublin, with operations in Belfast,
Romania and Hong Kong. The chips they create are
especially designed to bring the best 3D video experience to mobile phones, tablet computers and consumer
products.
The vision for Movidius came from the company’s CTO,
David Maloney. He had been doing some research
around high-performance computing, and came up with
some architectural ideas for new processors that would
have a very large amount of computing power with very
low power consumption.
This could be extremely useful to the mobile computing
market as there is only so much power for a given battery
size. Maloney’s ideas open many opportunities for applications to migrate to the mobile format that were previously only possible to run on PCs.
As well as being a flexible technology that can be
applied to many different applications in mobile devices,
the underlying architecture delivers a very compelling
solution for the 3D video application area.
There are some sizable companies involved in this
area, and the CEO of Movidius, Sean Mitchell, explains
how they plan to handle themselves in this marketplace.
“The strategy that we have approached the market with
is not to compete with the likes of Invidia or Texas
Instruments directly,” he says.
“They focus on the main processor within the phone,
the application processor. We have developed our chip
to be a co-processor that can assist that main processor
in delivering its new applications.
“For example, with 3D video, we would be attached to
the main application processor, but we would take control of both of the cameras in the system and we would Sean Mitchell.
do all the 3D processing. So we are kind of an additional
ing but because of power issues – we have adopted a different
accelerator to boost the performance of the main processor.
approach which is a highly parallel, multi-core architecture. It
“We are complementary to their offering, but they have an delivers massive computing power but at a much lower level of
ongoing development program themselves so we have to keep power consumption per operation.
ahead of that progress in the main processor and keep offering
“We are operating at quite modest clock rates but using
new stuff.”
much more intelligence in the architecture to deliver the workThe traditional approach to chip manufacturing is to continu- load.”
ally up the speed of the processor, but there is an upper limit
Mitchell is looking forward to showcasing Movidius’ technologoverned by the need to deliver larger amounts of power to gy at the ITLG/Irish Times Awards. “There is nowhere else in
drive them.
the world like Silicon Valley where the network connections are
Mitchell says, “Because increasing the processing speed so strong. It’s very important for Irish companies to plug into
was fundamentally not the way to go – not because of process- that,” he says.
“What the ITLG is doing is very important for Irish business.
I think they have a very good vision of how to put things together and how to plug people into important networks. Business is
done between people, so it is important to make those connections.”
M
D
37-Movidus-38Skillpages
3/22/11
1:11 PM
Page 2
CONNECTING THROUGH SKILLPAGES
BY CONOR HARRINGTON
Iain McDonald.
AIN MacDonald designed Skillpages so people who are searching for
someone with a skill can go beyond just depending on how the suppliers have presented themselves, either via advertising or simply through
membership of a professional or trade body.
By using social networks as a means of verification, MacDonald found
a way to assess other factors such as reliability and suitability in terms of
being able to work with skilled individuals.
“When you are looking for a lawyer or someone like that, often when a
friend recommends them to you and you end up going to the lawyer,” he
says.
“But they can turn out to be not the sort of person you are looking for.
We can circumvent that waste of time by being able to see all the details
of the person who has the skill before you contact them.
“What we have is a fabric of credibility. Say I go to Skillpages and I make
my skill page. In order to be found when someone searches for me, there
are a couple of things we take into account in the context of our search
algorithm.
“The first one is the content of my skill page, and does it match to what
someone would be searching for?
“The next element we take into account is who this person is actually
connected to.
“We may have someone who has created a skill page and is connected to 50 people, but they may be less credible then someone who has
created a skill page that may be only connected to five people.”
I
Unlike a general social networking site, Skillpages is designed to fulfill a
particular purpose.
“Facebook is very good for communicating with your friends and
LinkedIn is very good for managing your white-collar network of contacts.
But it is not so good if you are looking for a plumber or a carpenter,” says
MacDonald.
The underlying idea that determines credibility and trustworthiness both
offline and online is social proof. Any claim you may make about yourself
personally or professionally is validated, or not, against how you are perceived by your social network.
Professional bodies may declare you competent, award you some sort
of certification, and send you out the door to ply your trade, but it is how
you handle your day-to-day dealings that really count for most people.
This ability to check other people out is something that can work anywhere in the world. “We are a company that is based in Ireland, but we
operate all over the world and a significant proportion of our users are in
the U.S.,” MacDonald says.
“Within that group, a lot of our users are in California. So we expect the
growth of our business, not just the growth of users, but the physical
growth as we open a new office to be in California.
“The nomination by the ITLG has been very useful to us. It highlights
the quality of the technology that is coming out of Ireland overall, and we
are glad to be included in the group of companies announced by the
ITLG awards.”
39-NewTech-Arthur Cox
3/21/11
7:21 PM
Page 1
40-DCU
3/21/11
6:38 PM
Page 1
UNIVERSITY CHALLENGE WINNER: MIRAVEX
HE first annual University Challenge, which was developed
by the ITLG and sponsored by eircom, was held in the fall
of 2010.
Each of the nine universities from Ireland was able to nominate
promising companies to the University Challenge. These companies were offered the opportunity to present their technology to
the Silicon Valley delegation at the Silicon Valley Comes to Ireland
event held on November 17, 2010 in Limerick. The winning
company, Miravex, is a spin-off of Trinity College Dublin.
Miravex’s core technology is in the area of optics and image
analysis, and was developed during research at Trinity College.
The technology is at the heart of Miravex’s first product, ANTERA
3D™.
ANTERA 3D™ is an innovative imaging device for the analysis
of skin conditions and is targeted to dermatologists, aesthetic
doctors and plastic surgeons.
As the University Challenge winner, Miravex was awarded a Batt O’Keeffe, Minister for Enterprise Trade and Innovation; Dr. Guido Mariotto,
prize valued at $50,000 by Batt O’Keeffe, Irish Minister for CEO Miravex - 2010 ITLG eircom University Challenge winner; and Ronan
Enterprise, Trade and Innovation, and given the opportunity to Kneafsey, Director Corporate Markets, eircom.
travel to the ITLG awards event in Silicon Valley in the spring.
team and receive follow up mentoring through the Irish Innovation Center,
While in Silicon Valley, executives from Miravex will network with the ITLG www.irishic.com, in San Jose, California.
T
BUILDING BRIDGES BETWEEN IRISH UNIVERSITIES AND SILICON VALLEY
BY JOHN BRESLIN
There are plans to develop a competency
HE ITLG recently signed a memocenter with the help of the ITLG, specializrandum of understanding with
ing in market-led innovation.
Dublin City University (DCU) to promote
The university wants to create a stronger
technology innovation, the latest in a
affiliation with Silicon Valley, through menseries of alliances between the group
toring programs for graduate students iniand Ireland’s universities. The partnertially and for undergraduates later on.
ship, with an initial duration of three
Another desired result from the partnership
years, aims to form a strong engageis the development of a framework for
ment between DCU and ITLG.
DCU was originally established in
deeper research initiatives.
In 2010, the ITLG announced a part1975 as a National Institute for Higher
nership with NUI Galway, the University of
Education with a focus on science, techLimerick, and Shannon Development to
nology and business, and was awarded
form the Shannon Energy Valley initiative –
university status in 1989. There are now
a national hub for energy research and
over 11,000 students registered at
development – aiming to position Ireland
DCU, with a quarter of these at graduate
as a leading innovator and developer of
level.
clean technologies.
The university is a strong promoter of
The ITLG also signed a memorandum
both entrepreneurship and innovation,
DCU President, Professor Brian MacCraith; Taoiseach Enda
of understanding with Trinity College Dublin
incorporating the DCU Ryan Academy
Kenny and ITLG President John Hartnett.
(TCD) and UCD in 2009 to support techfor researchers and entrepreneurs in
Citywest, and the Invent enterprise center for technology-based startups nological innovation by university spinouts and to assist these companies
with business opportunities in the United States.
on the main DCU campus.
As well as running a yearly University Challenge Award for university spinWith a significant focus on research, DCU is a collaborator or leader in
three of Science Foundation Ireland’s CSETs (Centers for Science, out companies, the ITLG is also beginning efforts to support Irish students
Engineering and Technology): CLARITY, a center for sensor web technolo- looking for experience in the U.S. through a Silicon Valley mentoring progies; CTVR, a telecommunications research center; and CNGL, a center gram.
for next-generation localization.
In conjunction with the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and the Irish Department
Commenting on the alliance with ITLG, Brian MacCraith, President of of Foreign Affairs, the program has access to a network of 14,000 compaDCU, said that the seeds have been sown for substantial industry invest- nies in which Irish graduates can either apply for mentoring or for a full
ment in the future, both during and beyond the three-year partnership. internship.
T
41-CityofSJ-UnivLimerick
3/22/11
9:13 AM
Page 1
42-Moving to
3/22/11
1:06 PM
Page 1
MOVING TO SILICON VALLEY
BY LISA JACKSON
ILICON Valley, located in
Northern California in the
United States, is the epicenter of
the global high-tech industry. It is
synonymous with the world’s
largest technology corporations
including
Apple,
Google,
Facebook, Cisco and HP.
This 30 by 15 mile stretch of land
houses a wealth of resources waiting to be exploited by Irish companies willing to take a calculated risk.
There are major opportunities for
new Irish technology companies to
make a global impact through contacts and funding available in the
Valley.
Silicon Valley contains a huge concentration of venture capital (VC)
firms that are seeking the next eBay or Intel. Many of these firms are
centered on or around Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park – considered to be
the Wall Street of Silicon Valley.
One Irish company currently seeking to take advantage of the opportunities available is TapMap, founded in 2009 by Philip McNamara. The
company uses mobile platforms to publish retailers’ price and inventory
to make their products accessible to local consumers.
McNamara moved to Silicon Valley in November 2010. “It’s an amazing place because there are so many people here who can help. You
have these world-class companies, these Fortune 50 companies,
which are just 15 minutes drive away,” he said.
Compared with Ireland, he says, Silicon Valley has a “whole ecosystem that is full of really smart people, really good people who want to
help out and want to see you succeed. I was in Ireland and it was really hard to get access to those kinds of people and companies.”
Along with the many benefits of moving your company to Silicon
Valley, there are many challenges. There are a number of considerations
when deciding whether or not to make the move:
*An obvious disincentive is the physical distance from Ireland.
California is just over 5,000 miles away and eight hours behind in time.
There is currently no direct flight between Ireland and the Valley, forcing
travelers through other international airports to travel between the two.
*Even though there is a lot of funding available, there is intense competition for it from all parts of the globe, including other parts of America.
McNamara says that although this is difficult, it is worth persisting.
“There’s a lot more competition at the same time because everyone
is attracted here so you have all the companies from all over the U.S.
coming here to get funding so there’s huge amount of competition, but
at the same time the talent is here, the experience is here and the connections are here.”
*American VCs will expect you to set up a locally-incorporated company which involves obtaining American legal counsel.
*The overheads associated with locating your business in California
are significant. Aside from lawyers and the other costs of forming a com-
S
pany, it is vital to be able to get
around, and that means renting or
buying a car, or borrowing one if
you are lucky. Accommodation is
also expensive.
McNamara says, “You have to
have friends. A joke we’ve made is
“find a family” to stay with – that’s
really important because otherwise
you’re going to be spending money
on a hotel and that’s just incredibly
expensive… because you’re going
to have to spend two or three
months over here looking for funding and setting up your team.”
*The business etiquette can be a
culture shock. McNamara says,
“Everyone works all the time. I got an email this morning from an essential client at 7:15 am. You’re on Twitter and you’re on email and you’re
on LinkedIn and on Skype until all hours. It’s just the way it is. Business
is business 24/7 even with your social life.”
*Visas that allow you to work in the United States can be hard to
obtain and sometimes slow to arrive.
*Give some thought to your American cell phone operator. Verizon’s
current 3G phones do not work in Ireland. AT&T or T-Mobile use the
same technology as Ireland (i.e. GSM or UMTS) so this may be a better option if your phone needs to travel home with you.
Some of these obstacles can be overcome by aligning your company with a business start-up center that can help with VC meetings, office
space, recruitment and advice. One such center is the Irish Innovation
Center which opened in San Jose last year.
What if you decide that Silicon Valley is not for you? One company
that has decided to stay in Ireland is Cork-based Ferfics, a developer of
intellectual property and microchips for radio frequency applications.
Eugene Heaney, founder and CEO of Ferfics, believes it is possible
to attract global attention for a technology company without moving
away from Ireland. The target market of his company is giants like Nokia,
Apple and Samsung.
“I don’t think we have ever had difficulties reaching customers or getting access to customers because of our location. That’s never been an
issue,” Heaney says.
Ferfics secured €1.7 million equity funding last November to begin
production of an energy-efficient microchip. Heaney believes VC funding is available at home for other companies.
“Ireland is a pretty good place to try to raise capital in my view. I know
I may be saying that because we did raise capital,” he says.
There is no denying that Silicon Valley is attractive for new tech companies looking to launch themselves into the world. It’s positive, energetic and a hub of funding and ideas.
On the flip side, it’s expensive which can act as a barrier to many new
companies, but as McNamara believes, “You have to be where your
customers are and you’ve got to be where you can start the business.”
43ITLG BoardMembers
3/22/11
2:53 PM
Page 1
MANAGEMENT TEAM
Craig Barrett
Chairman
John Gilmore
Sling Media, Inc.
Cian Hughes
Head of Operations, ITLG
John Hartnett
President & Founder, ITLG
Rory McInerney
Intel Corporation
Richard Moran
Accretive Solutions
John Stanton
Executive Director, ITLG
Barry O’Sullivan
Cisco, Inc.
Conrad Burke
Innovalight, Inc.
ADVISORY BOARD
Craig Barrett
ITLG Chairman
John Hartnett
ITLG President & Founder
Jon Bukoski
BFD Group
Chris Horn
Iona Technologies
Conrad Burke
Innovalight
David Kirk
Formerly Cisco
Ed Colligan
Former CEO, Palm Inc.
Tom McEnery
Former Mayor
San Jose, CA
John Denniston
Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
Rory Dooley
Logitech
Brian Fitzgerald
Powells.com
George Foster
Stanford University
John Gilmore
Sling Media
Gary Hanley
Invest NI
John O’Grady
Kodak
Frank O’Mara
Allied Wireless
Communications Corporation
Barry O’Sullivan
Cisco
Rory McInerney
Intel Corporation
John Ryan
Co-founder, Macrovision
William McKiernan
Cybersource
Tony Redmond
Hewlett Packard
Peter Milner
Optivia Biotechnology
Anita Sands
UBS
Richard A. Moran
Accretive Solutions
Robert Simon
Ariva Partners
Martina Newell
University of California, Davis
Niall O’Connor
Apple
Kieran Hannon
Sidebar, Inc.
189 W. Santa Clara Street, San Jose, CA 95113
1-408-380-7200 1-408-380-7205 (fax)
[email protected] (email) www.itl g.org
Follow the ITLG on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn
Tim O’Connor
Former Secretary General to
President of Ireland
Gerry Staunton
Ireland Consul General
Helen Wilmot
Stanford Medical
The Irish Technology Leadership Group
Connecting Irish Opportunities to Silicon Valley.
For membership information, contact the ITLG at
www.itlg.org.
44-Back Cover
3/21/11
6:08 PM
Page 1

ment with Ireland he became chairman of the ITLG, and has led

Transcription

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