TWELVE IRISH technology firms will pitch their wares to a panel of five investors at a Dragon’s Den-style event in Trinity College today.
The Dragons are representatives of US venture capital firms Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers, Intel Capital and Venrock as well as investment banks Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse.
Twenty-five firms looked to pitch at the event, which is being organised by the Irish Technology Leaders Group (ITLG), a group of senior Irish and Irish-American technology executives whose aim is to foster links between the industry in Ireland and Silicon Valley.
Among those presenting to the financiers are Lincor Solutions, the maker of bedside entertainment and health information systems for hospitals, which was recently recognised as Ireland’s fastest-growing technology company in the Deloitte Fast 50 awards.
Three of the firms pitching operate in the area of green energy: Wavebob, Ocean Energy and Openhydro. DecaWave, Powervation and ChipSensors are so-called fabless semi-conductor companies which design electronic chips but get them manufactured by third parties.
The other companies hoping to attract funding are: Ammado, the social network focused on charitable causes; Customer Minds, a provider of on-demand marketing software; Design Hosting Software, which is in the software testing and analysis space; optical networking firm Firecomms; and RipFactory, a digital music play from Northern Ireland.
The ITLG is hosting two days of events for start-ups in Dublin this week with ITLG chairman John Hartnett estimating that the investors travelling to Ireland will have up to $50 million available to back Irish technology start-ups. The events are being sponsored by Cisco and Microsoft Ireland.
