Niamh Bushnell is an Irish entrepreneur who has returned from the thriving tech scene in New York to take up the role as the first Dublin Commissioner for Start-ups. Niamh co-founded her first company, a market research company called Pan Research, in Dublin in1996. She has worked in various roles since then, most recently as a start-up entrepreneur and angel investor in New York.
Niamh says she sees great potential for start-ups in Ireland, and has ambitious plans for the start-up scene in Dublin. She sat down with #allaboutjobs to give some key advice to start-ups in Ireland, and share what we can expect in 2015.
What brought you back to Dublin?
"I had been seeing the start up scene get really exciting here for a number of years but I hadn’t realised how far along we were. I knew there was a lot of momentum, I knew there were a lot of interesting people and I saw there were some great investors here. Enterprise Ireland has always been very active with start ups, and then we saw investors and accelerators coming into Ireland too. So a lot of the pieces of the pie were coming together and then in May last year this role came up. I thought I had a lot of the background needed for it from the investment side and from the start-up founder side, really knowing what it takes and how hard it is to be an entrepreneur, and then from my government experience working with Enterprise Ireland."
So how do you see the business scene in Ireland now?
"Out of recession came some of the best companies that we have right now People didn’t let the recession stop them from moving out of their jobs and doing something that they really saw an opportunity to do.
We have a great infrastructure, we’re very pro-entrepreneur in a lot of ways and we have a good support system for entrepreneurs. But, people still perceive that it’s hard to be an entrepreneur in Ireland, that it’s hard to set up a business here so we need more education around this.
We’re going in the right direction but there’s a lot we can do in terms of getting the message out there to entrepreneurs, that we understand the challenges of setting up a business and are here to help."
What kind of talent have you seen?
"There’s no shortage of talent in Ireland and in Dublin! During the IBYE awards this year there was so much talent and the energy and potential in the companies and not just the finalists, also in the early stages of the competition. There are so many great entrepreneurs here, so many great ideas. And then you look at EY Entrepreneur of the Year, Accenture, and other organisations who are very involved in start-ups. There are impressive clusters of start-ups all around and they are on a par with what I've seen in New York hands down, no issue. The difference with New York is the huge market, lots of scale, lots of on the ground expertise, and we’re here on an island looking to connect with those markets. But we’ve got the entrepreneurs, we’ve got the energy, we’ve got the skill set, and we’ve got the infrastructure."
How key are start-ups in Ireland?
"Like many economies most of our employment is in SMEs and I think start-ups being on that innovation edge and with that global vision and ambition are a very important element of who we are and where we’re going as an economy. The future is all about innovation and creativity and connecting people to each other in new ways that are better, cheaper, faster. It's all about disruption and new business models. We need to be constantly innovating and seeing around corners. We don't have to all be billion dollar companies, there are many large niches too, but a couple of moonshots would be nice!
It’s important that we have companies that have big global visions as well as SMEs that are family focused businesses in Ireland. We need to be known for being leading-edge and it’ll benefit us in terms of education, growing the economy, becoming category leaders in areas of real strength like enterprise software, internet of things, Software as a Service and more".
What made you want to be an entrepreneur?
"Most entrepreneurs start because of the excitement and the ability to be your own boss and plough your own furrow and see where it goes and take those risks. Then you have great entrepreneurs who can go the full hog and stay in the company forever. I’m definitely one that loves those early stages of funding, getting the first client, getting the first ten to 30 employees, those first 3 to 5 years where it’s scrappy and constantly trying to keep your head above water. That’s what’s really fun. It’s very hard but that’s the stuff that’s really fun."
Tell me about the plans for your new role as Dublin Commissioner for Start-ups?
"Broadly the role is to connect the dots, bring people together, be the Connector General as I say, of all of the great smart people, funding initiatives etc going on out there. I want to be known for convening different organisations and different people and helping them to collaborate more effectively together so that we can be greater than the sum of our parts.
There’s lots of great organisations supporting start ups and entrepreneurs in Ireland and in Dublin but there’s lots of silos, lots of fiefdoms, for want of a better word, within that and I think if we can connect the dots more with each other in terms of objectives and common language then we can think bigger and really support start-ups and provide them with a continuum of support. And it doesn’t need to be funding, it can be soft supports too. We need to have a vision for where our companies are going and see how institutions, initiatives, accelerators can help them along the route. Funding is just one part of that."
What projects can we expect to see next year?
New York-Dublin nexus
"One of the projects is a New York-Dublin nexus, recognising there is a lot of potential connecting companies between these two markets in areas like financial tech, B2B enterprise software, Consumer internet. New York is obviously a very big market, we have lots of great roots and networks there, lots of Irish people doing really big things there. We haven’t really tapped into that market in any kind of focused way. London is another one. Financial tech is huge there; we need to be strategically aligned and closer to that. We need to be the second man on the back of the horse. We don’t need to always be competing, we can find ways to collaborate and add value and bring what we know to the market. So or companies don’t lose out competitively from not being there."
Dublin data initiative
"There’s another big project going on that’s already launched: the Dublin Data Initiative. It’s, as it sounds, all about gathering data about the tech ecosystem in Dublin, what is the DNA of companies, the story of companies. What’s that arc from birth to death, and what do we need to look at in terms of gaps in funding, skills, other kinds of supports like office space. We’re using combined resources: all VC firms and trade associations, government organisations, banks, universities, everybody is going to get involved in feeding data into this. That gives us a baseline to say, how are we going to push the needle for these guys and tell that story to the international media?"
Content strategy project
"We’re great writers and storytellers, we need to leverage all of that and put it out there. Dublin doesn’t have any reputation overseas, I can tell you from living in New York for a long time that’s absolutely true. People have no clue that we’ve got a lot of great tech start ups here. We need to tell the story of Dublin, about our roots, the great companies that came out of Ireland 20 years ago already. We have a lineage of great tech companies, there are loads of them, and all of these great guys are still around to support the next wave. Who are the great companies coming out of Dublin today? Who are Dublin digital heroes? What’s the next generation – what are we going to be known for next? We’re building a content site that is kind of like a magazine that will tell those stories. We’re going to launch that in March. It’ll have news, thought leadership, profiles, Q&As, guest writers, and practical information about doing business here."
What advice would you give to entrepreneurs and start-ups?
"From my own experience, focus is the first thing. Focus, focus, focus. One feature or functionality, one way of measuring it, one outcome or benefit to your customers. You don’t need to have many features and many things that your product can do. You have one thing that "kills it", as they say in the States. One killer app, or one killer feature. So the person you’re talking to can understand the value and what’s compelling about what you do for them. Getting that down is very very very hard, much harder than it sounds and it took me a very long time to do it even though I knew the theory of how to."
"Secondly, connect with your key target market as early as possible. That doesn’t mean spending a lot of time or money necessarily, although that's even better. At the most basic level it means being knowledgeable about it. It can be over Skype or email; it’s so easy to join the dots but if the States, for example, is your target market then be there as early as you can either physically or virtually or both."