THE WEB entrepreneurs gathered for the Founders conference, running in parallel with the Dublin Web Summit, certainly don’t think small.
While the event has attracted the founders of web heavyweights such as Skype, YouTube and Twitter, the companies hoping to emulate their success were featured yesterday morning.
The panel discussions at the Royal College of Physicians on Dublin’s Kildare Street touched on getting the next billion people online, alternatives to the global banking system and possible replacements for Microsoft’s ubiquitous Windows software.
That was just before lunch – the afternoon sessions kicked off with Goldman Sachs International chairman Peter Sutherland and chief economist of the World Bank Dr Justin Lin, discussing the global economy.
Proceedings began with an impassioned speech by Caroline Casey, the blind disability campaigner, who urged the assembled technologists to turn their attention to creating products for people with disabilities.
“Don’t do it because you feel sorry for us – do it because it’s a huge potential market for you,” said Ms Casey.
Tariq Krim, the Paris based-founder of Jolicloud, was the first speaker to illustrate that these founders think on a different scale. His company is attempting to take on the might of Microsoft with an operating system for PCs that pulls its programmes and data from the web.
By making things simpler than “the same old Windows, the same old PCs” he hopes to entice more people online. “When I go into the country in France I see people who only watch the news at eight o’clock. There’s no Facebook and Twitter,” said Mr Krim. “We live in a world where two worlds exist in parallel – the question is how can you connect the two of them. My answer is simplicity.”
Irish businessman Mark Roden featured on a panel on the future of online payments. His firm Ezetop has designed a system which allows emigrants to send mobile phone credit back to loved ones in their home countries. Ezetop sends about $10 million of airtime a month from the developed to developing world.
“If you can use the cell phone as the instrument of economic improvement, that person’s life is improved,” said Mr Roden. “Suddenly they can answer questions such as ‘Do I bring my crops east or west [to sell them]?’ ” Ultimately the key to the success of those who came to Founders may simply be a matter of attitude and refusing to see things as problems.
Matt Galligan, chief executive of US software firm SimpleGeo, noted the “incredible” cost of using his US mobile phone here but said he was “enjoying my day more” because he wasn’t constantly checking social networks. “Normally when you get a load of geeks in a room they spend the first 10 minutes checking in to services, taking pictures of the pint they are about to drink, but that’s not happening here,” he said.