Patrick Bruen on Venture Capital Opportunities in Ireland

A venture capitalist serves an essential role to the development of a company in the

grassroots stage.

Venture capitalists invest in promising young companies with high growth potential, with hopes of gaining return on their investment, often imparting wisdom and guidance along the

way.

Since the dot com boom of the late 90’s, the concept of the startup company has presented more opportunities than ever to venture

capitalists, prospecting new markets to facilitate, low overhead and bootstrapping costs, and a bounty of tech savvy post grads to hire.

As the concept of the startup company spreads, venture capitalists are discovering strong

investment opportunities in unexpected places.

Ireland is one such place where venture capitalists are finding

increased investment opportunities.

Today, over 800 million euro in funding is available to new Irish companies through angel

investors and venture/development capital firms.

As political unrest slowly resolved in Ireland and the Catholic Church lost much of its political

influence, the economy began gaining steam.

In fact, their GDP had been on the rise since 1987, particularly through the 1990’s, an era of extreme economic growth in Ireland that came to be known as the Celtic Tiger.

By 2006, Ireland was the sixth wealthiest nation in the world.

Unfortunately, the recession of 2008 affected Ireland’s economy dramatically, as it did the

majority of the world.

As the rest of the world’s economy is gaining strength again, Ireland, too, is beginning to show marked signs of economic improvement with worthy investment opportunities to boot.

The split between Northern Ireland and The Republic of Ireland serves to complicate their

economy.

Although they are two distinct nations with two separate currencies, an all island business approach to the Irish economy is increasingly gaining support.

This is possible through the two nations’ shared membership in the European Union.

As the economic landscape changes, new opportunities are presented to entrepreneurs

and venture capitalists alike in Ireland.

This year, Ireland’s unemployment rate shrunk by nearly 12%, and GDP increased by over 6%.

As new business markets continued to be discovered, venture capitalists are beginning to

feel wise for investing in Ireland.