Dublin Web Summit Has €30K Prizes

Irish Start Ups To Compete  For Prizes  Worth €30,000 at the First Dublin Web Summit

Three Irish start ups will be given the opportunity to pitch their companies to notable tech company founders and investors from around the world, including Bebo Founder Michael Birch, who sold his social network in 2008 for $850 million. The overall winner will receive a series of additional prizes, including  €10,000 credit for legal services.

Birch recently established his own start up fund, and has personally placed €49 million in it. Birch's new Venture Capital fund has been designed to bridge the gap between angel and traditional venture funding, and  it  places a strong emphasis on  supporting entrepreneurialism in Europe on a wider level.

Birch will be joined in judging the start-ups by Irish serial entrepreneur Ray Nolan, who recently sold Web Reservations International for $340 million.

The Dublin Web Summit's inaugural Spark of Genius Competition, will close to entries on June 3rd. Start ups must be no more than three years of age, and have raised no more than €1 million in venture capital.

Commenting on the competition, the Summit founder Paddy Cosgrave said, "It's a valuable opportunity for an Irish start up to get exposure to a large audience of leading Irish and international investors and entrepreneurs, not to mention a great opportunity to cover some important costs."

Colm Rafferty, partner at Maples and Calder, which is the inaugural sponsor of the Spark of Genius competition said: "Our business is based on long term relationships and we want to foster these relationships with web entrepreneurs at the early stage of their journey.

"We see great opportunities for Ireland to develop world class web businesses of scale and we have direct experience of small but ambitious Irish internet start-ups becoming significant acquisition targets.

"Great ideas need support in the early stages and we are committed to investing time in web start-ups because we believe that at least some will ultimately become significant sources of business over the longer term," said Rafferty.

Schedule Announced for the Irish Software Show, June 8th-11th Click Here

People reading this article also read....

More  Web Summit  News  on IrishDev.com

More  Enterprise Ireland News on IrishDev.com

More  NovaUCD News on IrishDev.com

More  Business Innovation Centres News on IrishDev.com

More County Enterprise Board News on IrishDev.com

Get Instant Irish Tech News Updates....