Copacetic

From Ireland.com,

Dublin-based Trinity Venture Capital is considering listing on
secondary stock markets in Dublin and London.

It is understood that the company has engaged Davy to advise it on the
move, and is considering floating on the IEX in Dublin and the
Alternative Investment Market in London.

The move is designed at raising funds to expand its investment
activities. Sources say the company could raise up to €50 million from
the move.

An investor roadshow is believed to be under way, and the listings are
expected to happen by the end of the summer.

When contacted, a spokeswoman for the group said: “Trinity Venture
Capital is currently in discussions with institutional investors
reviewing the many options available to them to raise new capital to
grow their existing portfolio of companies over the next number of
years.”

The listed company manages Trinity’s portfolio of investments. These
include: Norkom, a listed financial software company worth €166
million; Havok, a maker of games software and special effects for
films; Aepona, which supplies network solutions to the telecoms
industry; and CR2, a banking software provider.

A decision by Trinity to float would follow a similar move by Boundary
Capital, a Dublin-based investment group headed by financier Niall
McFadden. Boundary listed on the IEX and AIM on May 15th. Its shares,
which listed at €1 each, rose sharply in the first few days of trading
but have since fallen back to €1.09.

Trinity is one of Ireland’s biggest venture capital groups. Founded in
September 1997, it is led by chairman Shane Reihill and chief
executive John Tracey.

It has raised €163 million to date for two funds that have invested
primarily in early-stage technology companies in Ireland and the UK.

Trinity had two high-profile exits from investee companies in 2006 -
Similarity Systems, in which it owned about 27 per cent, was sold for
€45.4 million, while software group Steeltrace was bought for $20
million by US firm Compuware.

It is understood that Trinity has decided to refocus its strategy and
move into the private equity space.

This would see it participate in larger transactions, including
buy-outs, buy-ins, restructurings and public-to-private deals.

Mr Reihill is a former joint chief executive of fuel importers and
distributors Tedcastle Holdings, which he left in 2001. He has also
worked for Dillon Read Investment Bank in New York. He is currently
chairman of Norkom, which this week announced a 38 per cent increase
in its revenues to €25 million.

Mr Tracey is an engineer and initially worked in the semiconductor
industry before joining Deloitte & Touche as a management consultant.

In 1989 he moved into venture capital, and spent eight years with ICC
Venture Capital, which is now owned by Bank of Scotland. He has led
Trinity since its inception.

Well Barcamp Dublin seemed to go well to my eye, the only fly in the ointment being practically non-existent WIFI. We had about 90 attendees in total and 20 or so speakers. Based on Barcamp Dublin and previous Barcamps you seem to get around two thirds of the registered numbers turning up.

Things that came up in this Barcamp:

• Make sure the geography of the building is clear to all attendees, loads of people asked me where the main auditorium was, even though I thought it was obvious.
• Name and label the talking areas and put plenty of signs up for people
• Make sure the speakers have plenty of water available
• I brought a big bag of random stationary to the event (postits, markers, sticky tape, spraymount (invaluable!), pens, elastic bands) etc. that proved useful
• Make sure the speakers clearly label their talk, No acronyms or contractions. I think it would be sensible for speakers to add their mobile numbers so they can be notified of schedule changes in the future
• Having tea and coffee available all day would be something I would aim for at the next Barcamp
• Both Barcamp Cork and Barcamp Dublin had the main networking and congregation area backing on to one of the talking areas. Ideally this should be seperated from the talking area so the networking can occur in parallel with talks
• Good WIFI is hard to achieve but Evert Bopp has offered to help here.
• Sean Foley of Microsoft (Clare Dillon’s boss) has offered to help with videoing future Barcamps.
• You need at least two full timers on the day, one to man the entrance desk (Elly Parker did trojan work in this area) and the other to generally police the event, making sure the schedule board gets filled properly, speakers are ready on time and people can find their way around.

I would like to make one proposal rather than having a seperate blog for each Barcamp (we had BarcampDublin and I see Barcamp Galway is live) why not create one Barcamp blog (barcamp.ie?) that all Barcamps can use. Then there is only feed to subscribe to and each Barcamp can leverage the expertise and community of the others?

Finally, Big shout out to Elly, Eoghan and Paul for helping put it all together.

John Toone CEO of Ireland’s emerging social music network startup,  Muzu.tv, spoke at SXSW about their goals in the coming months. Watch the promo video for a quick understanding of what they do (best to do it with headsphones, there is musical content).

These guys are going to go large…

Listen to Thomas Howe interviewing Sean O’Sullivan about mysay.com. MySay.com is a social telephony Web 2.0 application, think of it as twitter for voice.

I was at the Docklands Innovation Park Awards tonight to see Jonathan Mulligan of OpenPlain receive a cheque for €10,000 as the overall winner of the event.

OpenPlain is a subscription service that allows businesses to track the productivity of their employees by getting them to install a piece of software that monitors which applications are running and being used at any given point in time. It differs from the usual employee spyware in that it offers the user the ability to modify their own behaviour by showing them the stats that have been collected and comparing those stats with their peers. Yes I know, lots of people don’t like the idea of this kind of software, but so does Jon and more importantly he quantified it. 30% of customers won’t touch which leaves a very healthy 70% market share thank you very much.
Two other companies were up for the big prize. Pedantix (warning website has annoying audio), represented by Frank Fowley, and The Wealth Shop represented by Ray Langan.

Pedantix have developed automated software called FlightPAD. FlightPAD connects flight information display systems (aka, FIDS, the big board at the airport) with personal address systems and converts FIDS messages to PA messages that can be routed to wherever they are required. The software has been sold successfully to several Irish Airport authorities and their are obvious cross over markets to Malls, Train stations, bus stations etc.

The Wealth Shop is a retail play offering flat fee (€200) financial advice and planning to middle income earners (30-80k bracket) . They have software package that can produce a financial plan for each customer and they opened their first retail outlet in the OmniPark, Santry in Dec 2006. They have plans to open several more retail outlets over the coming year. I want Ray to do my presentations in the future, he was fantastic.
In general the quality of offerings and presentations were excellent and what was most encouraging was that all these businesses are currently revenue generating.
Three companies also won highly commended awards on the night, PutPlace.com (blush!), G20 Technologies and Tochar Technologies. The commended companies only got to do a 90 second elevator pitch, so I encourage you to visit their websites for the full story, as opposed to compressing it even more here.

The standard was universally high and it’s a crying shame there isn’t a dollar of VC available at the moment from the big players in the Irish market.

Enterprise Ireland where is that 175m when we need it?

This map doesn’t reflect reality.

This is my cycle lane to work in the Morning. Its on Mobhi Road just outside the Na Fianna GAA club.

Yes, if you manage to negotiate the telegraph pole, that is a waste bin behind it.

The Corpo cut two full traffic lanes off O’Connell St. in the last greate re-org but still no room for cycle lanes? I cycled down there for the first time this morning during rush hour and it was bloody murder. How about some joined up writing on the cycle lane front Dublin Corporation?

I am planning to rent a car to head down to BarcampIreland. Budget looked like a good bet and their prices were competitive. So I booked my car but noticed as a I was filling in the payment form that they levied a €25 euro airport pickup fee. This seemed a bit steep as the car itself only cost €40. No bother, sure I’ll move the pickup to Drumocondra. No joy there however, there is similar €25 euro fee for pickup in a “City Centre location” as the woman said on the phone. So basically no matter where you get your car in Dublin you’ll suffer a €25 surcharge that is buried in the small print.

The final screw job is a €30 euro cancellation fee if you fail to cancel the book within  48 hours.

Use Argus instead, cheaper and better in everyway with no hidden surcharges.