Back from 34 degrees Algarve sunshine to find an encouraging number of new business opportunities – all in the technology sector. This upbeat atmosphere confirmed by press release which I write on first day back for the Irish Venture Capital Association on funding figures to be announced shortly. These find that VC funding has held up remarkably well for Irish tech firms in the first half of 2009 despite the global credit crunch and recession. Funding for the first half is ahead of 2008 which itself was the best year since 2002. The survey shows that there is an investor appetite for Irish tech firms not only from local VCs but international as well.
During the great tech recession following the post dot com boom, we found that tech firms did not switch off PR (apart from the doomed dot comers who switched off everything). PR represents value and even more so today if you can leverage global Online PR. Irish client StatCounter and ourselves won the 2009 PR Excellence Award for New Media in June. The programme, implemented out of Dublin, generated over 100,000 hits from over 100 countries in two weeks. The online campaign led to client interviews by New York Times, Newsweek, Reuters and others.
And a story in The Times confirms the signs of life in the technology sector. A number of Silicon Valley firms are planning IPOs. This continues a trend in which half of the 16 US IPOs in 2009 to date have been by software or technology companies.*
The good news on the Irish front is that investment in Irish technology firms is widely diversified and includes software, pharma/biotechnology, drug delivery and medical devices, telecoms, environment technology and other technology including nano technology, fibre optics, photonics and semiconductor chips.
Ronnie Simpson is founder of Simpson Financial & Technology PR
and may be contacted at: ronnie@simpsonftpr.ie or + 353 1 260 5300.
* “Smiles return to Silicon Valley as market rediscovers taste for technology” by Mike Harvey, The Times, Monday, August, 17th, 2009
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/technology/article6798340.ece