Niamh Bushnell the CEO of TechIreland says it is her mission to “tell the tale of innovation in Ireland”. Another mission is to make sure female founders have better access to funding.
TechIreland, for those who may not know, is a platform that tracks innovation across all 26 counties in Ireland.
“We track what companies are innovating in each county, what their strengths are, what progress they are making, who their customers are, what their business model is, and what supports and funding they received (if any). Users of TechIreland can also request an introduction with the companies they are interested in,” explains Bushnell.
The information available on TechIreland has many useful applications.
“It’s useful for anyone interested in innovation in Ireland, whether that be business founders, investors, startups, job seekers and FDI firms,” says Bushnell.
“We want this book to land in front of global decision makers and influencers.”
TechIreland uses public sources to build the business profiles on the site and also produces reports.
“We produced our first annual report on Irish innovation in January 2018 and it’s been downloaded over 1,200 times since,” says Bushnell.
From this report came a coffee-table book, Innovation Nation. It was dispatched by the Department of Foreign Affairs to Irish consulates and embassies all over the world for St. Patrick’s Day, 2018.
“We want this book to land in front of global decision makers and influencers,” says Bushnell. “It features over 100 companies we’ve been tracking during the year and shows people that these are Irish companies, building and expanding out of Ireland.”
“Many cultural changes need to happen in Ireland before there is equality in the startup scene.”
More places at the funding table
Bushnell and her team also recently launched a year-long campaign called the €100m Campaign.
“There was just €79.4m secured by female-led startups in 2017 in comparison to the €580m we’d
