Advertisement

We need your help now

Support from readers like you keeps The Journal open.

You are visiting us because we have something you value. Independent, unbiased news that tells the truth. Advertising revenue goes some way to support our mission, but this year it has not been enough.

If you've seen value in our reporting, please contribute what you can, so we can continue to produce accurate and meaningful journalism. For everyone who needs it.

Eoghan Murphy at Facebook HQ, Palo Alto Eoghan Murphy

Column What is the secret of Silicon Valley? And can we bring it to Ireland?

Fine Gael TD Eoghan Murphy travelled to tech central in the US to figure out if Ireland can recreate that ecosystem for innovation and success. Rule 1 – stop writing reports and just get doing.

FACEBOOK HQ, Palo Alto, Silicon Valley. In the lobby is a flat-screen TV showing a rotating digital globe. White beams bounce around it continuously from point to point, crossing oceans, linking continents. New friendships as they are made in real time between people’s Facebook pages all over the world. This is ground zero of the social media universe and it’s pretty damn cool.

In my suit shoes, trousers and shirt I am way overdressed. I don’t know how many millions of dollars the guy I’m meeting is worth, whether he’s five years younger or older, but I’m pretty sure, like everyone else I’ve met so far this week, he’ll be in Converse, jeans and a t-shirt. And he is.

He gives me a tour of their operation – all open plan, bikes against desks, graffiti on the walls. We grab a coconut water from one of the free-of-charge coffee docks and head out to the basketball court, where he likes to brainstorm with his team, he tells me. As it happens we’re the same age and so we get on quite well, chatting about everything from tech to politics to new sporting interests (it turns out we’ve both recently taken to a bit of climbing).

After about an hour we part company and I head down California Avenue in the sun, carrying a gift from my first actual Facebook friend. It’s a poster that confidently proclaims: “done is better than perfect”.

Facebook has surpassed Google in the ‘coolest place to work stakes’. The only thing cooler is to work for yourself in a hyped-up start-up, which Facebook and Google once were themselves. And of which there are many more out here.

So what is it about this place that young guys and girls can so casually stroll out of college and set up companies, industries even, that will come to dominate our known universe? Or set up rivals to destroy them?

Seriously. Hewlett Packard and Intel were born here, so was Apple. Does a day go by now where we don’t use either Google or Facebook? I use both more than I use my bike or my microwave.

I jump on the Caltrain with a bunch of Giants fans and on our hour-long journey to San Francisco I toss the whole thing over in mind. I’ve been on Stanford campus, in the design school and tech transfer office; visited the hottest incubators like 500 Startups and Plug and Play Tech Centre; met with serial entrepreneurs and first-timers; and I’ve listened to the money men: Silicon Valley Bank and the various venture capital firms and angel investors that help make the whole place tick.

What I’m looking for cannot be bottled and checked on to a plane

All I want to know is, what’s the secret and how do I get it back to Ireland? I’m hoping the expats out here can help me and throughout the course of my week I make it my business to meet with Irish folk involved in every space, every corner of this tech-mecca: the clean tech pioneer, the guy who finished his Leaving Cert and got on a plane two days later to go set up a company in The Valley, the grad student who wants to take on and take down Facebook, the professor who is helping students reinvent the way we interact with the world and the financial patriot helping fellow Irish entrepreneurs.

But they all tell me the same thing. That what I’m looking for cannot be bottled and checked on to a plane. It’s an attitude, an atmosphere. It’s cultural, historic even – one traces it back to the 1800s and the kinds of people who left their comfy homes and clean cities in the east to strike out here on their own in the unknown. The first American innovators.

It’s a nice, romantic way to look at the world but what it essentially reveals is the truth that Silicon Valley is unique, the perfect ecosystem. And perfection by its very nature cannot be copied: there can be no second silicon city.

And yet that doesn’t mean that we can’t create something good ourselves in Ireland, something different, something special (in the European context at least).

I think about this some more as I stroll from the train station back to my friend’s apartment, past the new building where Twitter is about to relocate. Another major outfit coming to Dublin to set up an international HQ.

Ireland is already special for the big established players coming in to Europe because of our low corporation tax rate, amongst other things. But establishment isn’t innovation, and one, albeit big, element does not a healthy ecosystem make. The kind of FDI we need to attract if we’re to be truly special – an investment of new capital, new people, new ideas: a new culture of enterprise – doesn’t care about corporation tax rates (not for the first couple of years anyhow).

It can sometimes be the case of: How can government get out of the way

A key question for me as a policy maker, and hence this trip is: what can the government do to attract and foster this new culture? It’s a question I ask cautiously though as sometimes it can be more a case of what shouldn’t the government do or how can government get out of the way. I mean imagine if some suited middle-aged official was in charge of Paddy Cosgrave’s incredibly successful Web Summit and Founders series? It just wouldn’t work.

One of the first things you learn when you step in to such an environment is that it can’t be created or fed by politicians or bureaucrats. As one person in Stanford said to me, “enterprise requires chaos”. And the genuine cultural element, the fail to succeed mentality that we don’t seem to have here, can’t be impregnated in our collective psyche with a law.

But politics, and politicians, can facilitate. And, of course, we’re not starting from scratch. There’s already a lot going on. But we need to do more to help properly seed an entrepreneurial, start-up environment, be it in Dublin, Galway, Cork or Kerry. And as I get chatting with our Irish abroad, so keen to give something back, if only an idea, I get to hear more.

Some are small changes, while others are more radical. Some can be initiated quite easily while others are longer term goals. But each is compelling and taken together could actually be the difference.

Telling someone that it’s ok to fail and having them believe it and go for it is one thing. But making it impossible for them to start back up again if they do, through regressive and punitive bankruptcy laws, undermines any possibility of a virtuous cycle through failure. We know this. And the government is moving on this. But not far enough in my opinion.

We can’t be afraid of failure

At the Dublin Web Summit in June a successful foreign entrepreneur was asked: how do you decide where to locate your company? His simple answer, “I go where the developers are”. Start-up internet companies need developers and we don’t have nearly enough. But imagine if we told young aspiring founders from abroad that we would pay 20-25 per cent of their developers’ wages. They would flock here overnight and everyone else would come with them: more developers, designers, investors.  Quebec is doing just that at the moment in an attempt to become the gaming capital of the world and they’re flocking there in droves (86 new companies since the initiative started).

It might sound a tad radical and sure we don’t have the money to do this. But what if instead we said we wouldn’t charge them any income tax for the first year? Or PRSI? Hey, it’s just an idea, take it for a walk, think of something better. And there are many more ideas out there.

If we’re going to really become a creative, innovative place to work and live then we need to start thinking a bit more creatively in our policies too. And we can’t be afraid of failure. Some ideas will fail, it’s essential in fact that they do. But one thing is certain: if we keep just talking and hoping and writing reports on how to achieve the perfect start-up ecosystem for Dublin or wherever then we guarantee ourselves neither failure nor success. We won’t be special, we’ll be irrelevant. Forget perfection. It’s time to get doing.

Readers like you are keeping these stories free for everyone...
A mix of advertising and supporting contributions helps keep paywalls away from valuable information like this article. Over 5,000 readers like you have already stepped up and support us with a monthly payment or a once-off donation.

Close
28 Comments
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Rommel Burke
    Favourite Rommel Burke
    Report
    May 15th 2012, 3:05 PM

    Media mogul shocked by media bias! You couldn’t make it up. Well you could but…..I’m past caring.

    101
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Fagan's
    Favourite Fagan's
    Report
    May 15th 2012, 2:58 PM

    Dennis you have certainly given them enough material to use against you.

    That said, it has to be one of the lowest grade newspapers I have ever read, full of made up anon. quotes, character assassination and lies.

    (A household journalist in the Sunday Independent confirmed that “Yeah, we make up the quotes, Aengus gave us 50p a word to do it, he once beat a journalist with his own shoe, after he reported the news accurately”).

    85
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute jason bourne
    Favourite jason bourne
    Report
    May 15th 2012, 3:33 PM

    Is it me or does denis o Brien look incredibly like don conroy in that photo?

    73
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Cal Mooney
    Favourite Cal Mooney
    Report
    May 15th 2012, 4:14 PM

    I dont mean to give the baul Denis a compliment… but he looks more like Rutger Hauer in this photo..
    http://www.avclub.com/articles/rutger-hauer,55531/

    3
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Begrudgy
    Favourite Begrudgy
    Report
    May 15th 2012, 2:55 PM

    How much has o’brien lost again in his attempted takeover of Indepentant news and media with share price collapse. Definately in the hundreds of millions. Was this revenge and power hungry mission really worth that much ? Guess you just have to ask his ego.

    68
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute HARRY MARKOPOLOS
    Favourite HARRY MARKOPOLOS
    Report
    May 15th 2012, 7:01 PM

    Denis will just have to buy out the ”Sindo” and sack Mr Morrissey just like he did with Dunphy and Smyth.

    23
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Gay Pea McManus
    Favourite Gay Pea McManus
    Report
    May 16th 2012, 3:40 PM

    Could have been worse, at least they didn’t say he had a micropenis or something, that would have have had something to really whinge about, while half the country are on the breadline.

    4
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Dave
    Favourite Dave
    Report
    May 15th 2012, 3:32 PM

    The Independent is no better than a red top. The whole paper is agenda driven, its not just directed at DOB.

    64
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Martin Mac
    Favourite Martin Mac
    Report
    May 15th 2012, 4:25 PM

    Whatever about your man O’Brien….he is right about one thing the SINDO “NEWSPAPER” is one the worst & most vested interested driven paper you are EVER likely to read. FACT. I would not use that paper for my cats litter tray its that vile.

    44
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Kevin O'Sullivan
    Favourite Kevin O'Sullivan
    Report
    May 15th 2012, 3:20 PM

    A lot of people say that about the Sindo tbh.

    40
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Charles Fitzgerald
    Favourite Charles Fitzgerald
    Report
    May 15th 2012, 5:46 PM

    Man goes from little rich kid with no aptitude for running a business to a billionaire communications mogul by getting a mobile telephony under dubious circumstances. He ‘jokes’ about giving a government minister 100k to his chief executive and claims he should have been able to deduce from the tone of his voice that he was ‘taking the piss’. He the mismanages ESAT for as long as he needs to hold the license, moves to Portugal and flogs the company to O2 for around a 600m profit and claims non residency to avoid CGT. He tells Pat Kenny he took out multiple mortgages on his house to pay for the license. The tribunal finds him a non credible witness and he claims victimization. If only CAB had a corruption wing.

    39
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Diarmuid Danger Lenihan
    Favourite Diarmuid Danger Lenihan
    Report
    May 15th 2012, 3:13 PM

    Tis a hard old life for Denis. Hello detective ford !

    28
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute limofax
    Favourite limofax
    Report
    May 15th 2012, 6:17 PM

    Wasn’t he found to be corrupt?
    That said the paper is a piece of s**t anyway.

    23
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Kieran Clarke
    Favourite Kieran Clarke
    Report
    May 15th 2012, 6:41 PM

    There is definitely a market for a good sunday newspaper in Ireland, the tribune and independent are rubbish, the times is little more than the English times with about 2 extra articles and while it is very good the sunday business post isn’t exactly for everyone.

    22
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Ann Toebes
    Favourite Ann Toebes
    Report
    May 15th 2012, 11:50 PM

    There hasn’t been a Tribune for about a year now – safe to say you are not missing it!!

    7
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Kieran Clarke
    Favourite Kieran Clarke
    Report
    May 16th 2012, 12:44 AM

    Haha I actually lived abroad for most of the year hadn’t realised cheers lol

    2
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Susie Chester
    Favourite Susie Chester
    Report
    May 15th 2012, 3:43 PM

    He never said any of it was lies tho !

    19
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Frank Faldo
    Favourite Frank Faldo
    Report
    May 15th 2012, 4:08 PM

    I think hes an arogant man but he must remember money is not happiness.

    15
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Barry McSweeney
    Favourite Barry McSweeney
    Report
    May 15th 2012, 5:37 PM

    When tax exiles fall out . . . .

    16
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Mick Conway
    Favourite Mick Conway
    Report
    May 16th 2012, 1:14 AM

    the man is a hero. a through example of an irish man who has gone on to be a success. even if he did some dodgy dealings its how ireland worked at the time. His methods where called into question because he was high profile. You cannot say Denis doesnt have a business brain just look at what he has done since he made a few million with esat. digifone is a huge success one of the biggest telecoms companies ever and no matter where he is a resident now. would you not do the same to protect your income?

    6
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Frank2521
    Favourite Frank2521
    Report
    May 15th 2012, 11:49 PM

    O Brien owns all the media as no press will print anything about him as they are afraid of his legal team. My comments were blocked too.

    6
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Adam Magari
    Favourite Adam Magari
    Report
    May 15th 2012, 11:00 PM

    O’Brien should look on the bright side. The Sunday Independent might have won a subediting contract if the recent tribunal report completion had been put out to tender.

    3
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Fiachra Maolmordha Ó Raghallaigh
    Favourite Fiachra Maolmordha Ó Raghallaigh
    Report
    May 16th 2012, 12:16 AM

    He handed them the gun (the tribunal), and gave them a worthy motive to shoot them (potential editorial interference).

    Although the Indo is a rag, I doubt O’Brien cares much for journalistic quality – he just wants to stop them from attacking him.

    2
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Mick Conway
    Favourite Mick Conway
    Report
    May 16th 2012, 1:26 AM

    digicel even*

    1
Submit a report
Please help us understand how this comment violates our community guidelines.
Thank you for the feedback
Your feedback has been sent to our team for review.
JournalTv
News in 60 seconds