How I ended up in a Shark Tank in the beautiful West of Ireland

This is a cool story about innovation and change in our global economy....

So I'm sitting in my local Starbucks here in New York earlier this year flipping through the hundred or so emails I had set aside for later reading. Unfortunately for me, it's later now.

Most of my emails I can quickly scan and delete. Others are swiftly sorted and appropriate actions taken on the spot. But then there are those that just don't seem to want to go away. In this last category is one from Enterprise Ireland asking me if I want a shot at pitching to a panel of Industry Experts, VC's and Technologists in of all places, Galway, Ireland.

the brilliant nightlife of Galway City

Now, I'm a Dublin born native living in New York for many years at this time. I'm also an entrepreneur and technologist and oddly, I've spent many great summers in, of all places, beautiful Galway City, Ireland. Not hard to see now how this particular email just wouldn't go away. I kept reading.

It seems Enterprise Ireland periodically seeks overseas entrepreneurs willing to start a new business in Ireland. They have what's called their High Potential Start Up unit actively engaged in seeking enterprising individuals from around the world willing to take a chance on Ireland as a place to start a new business. You need to have an innovative solution to a real world business problem - one that will hold up under fairly intense scrutiny. If you think you have that, then you follow the online process and participate on an online interview. If successful at this stage, you are brought over to pitch to Ireland's version of Shark Tank in the beautiful and rugged West or Ireland. If you are successful at that, Enterprise Ireland will fund you and become an equity partner. Your new company will then become an Enterprise Ireland client and will receive many of the supports necessary to growing a business in Ireland and the European Union.

Now, my foolish Irish heart is telling me this is a no-brainer - just spend the couple of hours it will take to do the online process and be done with it. It's the old sod, for crying out loud...how can you miss? But my heartless brain keeps telling my heart there's no such thing as a no-brainer, and reminds it we still have 48 friggin emails to wade through. And these solicitations are generally a huge bureaucratic time waster anyway, right?

So the email stayed in the folder until later (much later) when there were absolutely no other emails left. Then I waited some more, hesitated and waited some more. Finally, almost on a whim, I relented and went ahead with the process. When done with it, I just went about my business - completely forgetting about it. I was just happy my "later" folder was had zero emails and I could get back to some "real" work.

Months pass....

Then one day, another email from EI showed up in my inbox. This one was congratulating me and providing travel arrangements to Ireland! You know those solicitations you get from Nigeria from time to time? Same initial feeling. But that soon went away. It seemed this was the real deal....bank account details and forwarding address not requested.

Long story short, a month later I found myself on a train from Dublin to Galway City with a group of other entrepreneurs from Australia, China, India, Britain and a host of other nations. It was exciting - all the more so because this was my native land, hosting a technology event all these years later.

Enterprise Ireland couldn't have been more hospitable, taking us on tours of the energetic Dublin and Galway innovation centers, business accelerators and technology incubators. In Dublin, we visited the NDRC, the Guinness Enterprise Center, Dogpatch Labs and the technology incubators at Trinity College and University College Dublin.

conference rooms in the old whiskey vaults at Dogpatch Labs

busy innovating at the NDRC
 

the beautiful, historic campus at Trinity College

Being engaged with the startup scene here in New York City and Brooklyn, I'd have to say the Irish equivalents were just that; quite equivalent. The entrepreneurs and innovators I met along the way were just as eager, enthusiastic and hard working as those here in America. The mentors, investors and industry experts were just as keen too. This was truly great to see - a vibrant and forward-looking support structure for fostering real innovation and growth.

After our tour of the Dublin startup and business accelerator scene, we headed off to Galway the next day.

arriving at Galway City by train

If you haven't been, you have to put Galway on the bucket list. It has some of the best nightlife and traditional Irish music you'll find anywhere. That's saying a lot, coming from a "Dub" and being a New York native now.

We stayed at the Radisson Blu Hotel while in Galway and the weather could not have been nicer. As any Irish person will tell you, you get a day like this in Ireland and there's simply no place like it. And yes, we even have palm trees!

the view from the Radisson Blu Hotel in Galway City

Again, Enterprise Ireland came through for the overseas crowd, even arranging a meet-and-greet/choose-Galway-for-your-business pitch from the mayor of Galway himself, Noel Larkin. 

the mayor of Galway greeting myself and the other overseas entrepreneurs

Finally, on our last official day in Ireland, we got to pitch to a panel of investors, industry experts and business executives in Galway's version of "the tank".

making preparations in "the tank" in Galway City

For my Irish friends, Shark Tank is a bit of a cultural/entertainment phenomenon here in America. It started off as a good way to entertain the masses and shine a light on the process of innovation and and the harsh realities of building a business from scratch. Sadly, it has been focusing more on entertaining the masses since it became a hugely successful prime time TV show here, imo. Still relatively decent entertainment though.

For my American friends, BBC's Dragons' Den is a similar show that airs in the EU and other markets.

Thankfully, Galway's version was not quite as harsh as the made for TV versions. No Kevin O'Leary offering to take your seemingly "brilliant" idea out behind the toolshed and beat it to death as a courtesy to you. No offense Kevin, I agree with the substance of most of your advice, if not always the delivery. 

That said, the pitch in Galway was not easy either. Tough and pointed (but necessary) questions were asked - often very directly. The usual business metrics, potential market size, technology feasibility and ability to monetize questions were all in need of good, solid and believable answers - as they should be. The panel was very qualified and while tough, you also got the distinct feeling they really wanted you to succeed. One the whole, it was a great event. Well done Enterprise Ireland!

So there you have it. How I ended up in a Shark Tank in the West of Ireland!

I stayed on in Dublin for a few days after that and got together with my many great friends - over twenty of us in all. These are the same great guys I knew when I was a teenager going up in Dublin and it was so good to see them all again. Now, with my US based company (Gyst, only if you happen to be interested) well on its path here in the good old USofA I have a new venture and a new partner offering the same technology to the EU market. Please God I'll see much more of my great friends in the years ahead. And so it was not so sad saying goodbye this time, as my friends and I went our separate ways.

The next day, I found myself on the plane with a lot of time on my hands as I crossed back over the Atlantic to New York.

And it was about this time that it occurred to me that when I graduated with my electrical engineering degree in Dublin all of those years earlier, my native home could not even offer me a job in that field, let alone any kind of a career or future in science and technology.

Ireland was going through it's own severe political and economic conflicts at the time. Jobs were scarce, the economy was in recession and it was a victory simply not to end up a victim of sectarian violence at the time. I spent a lot of days walking to class wondering if there was a car bomb in the trunk of the vehicle I had just crossed the street to avoid. The late 60s and early 70's saw the beginning of senseless violence that dragged on for decades and nearly ruined this beautiful little land.

the bombing at Eden Quay, Dublin in 1972

Lucky (very lucky) for me, my Mom was a US citizen, married to my Dad, an Irish citizen. I was the only one in my graduating class that had an option to emigrate to America. Very fortunate indeed.

Now here it was, years later and, with the unrest finally, finally gone, little Ireland is actually luring talent from other countries around the world - most of them much larger in terms of GDP, population, market size and almost every other metric that matters for economic growth. Good for Ireland!

Now, I still don't have my head fully around the intellectual property, tax and financial shenanigans the likes of Apple, Google, Facebook and a host of other multinationals are leveraging for profit in the new global paradigm - especially in Ireland. But I'm sure the respective national interests, public and private equity interests and of course the legal elite will eventually work out a deal everyone can live with. In the meantime, I'm all for free markets and way to go Ireland!!

If a little country like this, having suffered centuries of plunder, occupation and oppression, and more recently, decades of sectarian violence and political and economic unrest, if a little country like this can make it, maybe it will give those other poor struggling and oppressed countries hope that their day to shine will indeed come too.

Daniel O’Sullivan is the CEO and Founder of Gyst, a company focused on developing software to allow technology to adapt to human behavior in real time.