The Post NetVisionary Interview

Interesting read michele, Your last point about the lack of investment in Irish Tech is something I have been worried about for quite a while.
How can we expect to compete with the rest of the world if we do not do any research or fund our entrepeneurs to the same level as other countries.
We have a very high level of education in this country, we should really be leveraging that to give ourselves a competitive edge (especially with the imminent emergance of China and India as hi-tech countries)

Ed - It's a moot point. Governments talk about encouraging investment once every now and then, but realistically they seem to focus their energies on the Dells and Microsofts, which in the long run will leave us as a second or third tier supplier.

But you see they don't get the photo opportunity if a small irish tech company opens in a tiny office above a shop somewhere.

But the day will come where one of those tiny companies would invent something revolutionary and employ 100's of people.

But that doesn't look like it's going to happen with the current system of investment/research.

How do these things work in the states? Does the Govt help and support small businesses or is it always VCs and angel investors? I always thought in the American system it was jumping into the deep end with no Governmental arm-bands.

I think the government and private enterprise plough a lot more money into research grants and acedemic research facilities. small business is mostly VC and private investment as far as I know.

The problem in my view is that we, as a country, rely too heavily on the foreign corporates. When one of them pulls out or moves part of their operations to another country the government cries and wails. If they were to do more to encourage indigenous industry this might not be so much of an issue. It's a catch 22 though...