Conor talks about bootstrapping startups in Ireland and the idea sounds good at first blush, but this is Ireland, not America or India. When YCombinator gets to pick the best of Stanford or Andy Bechtolsheim gives 100,000 dollars to two guys with an idea  the demographics have already done there work.

Populations of multi-millions trumps populations of 4 million everytime. I hate to burst people’s bubble, but we simply won’t generate as many entrepreneurs in Ireland as India or the USA, and even if we could we don’t have a touchstone tech  centre where you can go and expect to find them.

What can we do? Go back earlier in the supply chain, get this stuff into the schools, and then we have some hope.  Sorry to rain on the parade guys.

ReadWriteWeb has a nice writeup on Glubble, a Firefox plugin for Parental control. It has some nice features including,

 Glubble lets you set up child accounts in two flavors: for kids who can read, and kids who can’t. The main difference is that the pre-read accounts, as they are called, don’t display a URL and search bar, so kids instead navigate by clicking on icons and links to pre-defined sites.

…

Glubble comes preloaded with a set of approved websites. These include kid friendly sites like Fisher Price, Barbie.com, Animal Planet, Disney, and Nickelodeon. It also appears that every site in the Yahoo! Kids Directory is available for kids protected by Glubble (at least, every site I clicked on worked). Yahoo! Kids lists over 57,000 web sites in its directory, so there are a fair number to get started with.

So lock up your Internet Explorer and go Glubble.

Thank you.

Please ignore.

I was out for pints last night with Mark Taylor who is Eircom’s new Web 2.0 Evangelist (who knew?). He was asking about events for Web 2.0 geeks in Dublin which got me thinking about Open Coffee.

Anybody on for an Open Coffee event in Dublin? Any suggested venues?

 As my commenters have pointed out Open Coffee is alive and kicking in Dublin  at the Morrison Hotel.  I just missed one today. Serves me right for not googling it first.

Anyway the next one is two weeks away and I’ve just added it to my calendar. Hope to see you there. 

Here is me on  the Redcouch at NextWeb. Memo to self,  push glasses up on nose before doing video interviews.

a great quote, from a great man. (via Joel)

So when I say “inch by inch” — that’s what I mean. To create a usable piece of software, you have to fight for every fix, every feature, every little accomodation that will get one more person up the curve. There are no shortcuts. Luck is involved, but you don’t win by being lucky, it happens because you fought for every inch

Titanic Dry Dock

Originally uploaded by Joe Drumgoole

I was in belfast a while back and I took this snap of theTitanic dry dock. A piece of history.

The Fridge of Shame

Originally uploaded by Joe Drumgoole

Please defrost me.

(You know who you are).

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.