I came across the microformat website via Jon Udell’s blog. Some pretty good design principles in here. Could be retrofitted quite usefully on the RFC process (from whence many of the ideas came, I guess).

Its been a long time but today for the first time in many years I took a stroll through The Iveagh Gardens. These beautiful, dishevelled gardens, hidden south of St Stephens Green, between Earlsfort Terrace and Harcourt Street are usually empty, save for the handful of souls who know their secrets.

I first discovered them in College when you could Enter them from Newman House on the south side of St. Stephen’s Green. The most commonly used is I believe the entrance behind the National Concert Hall. The garden presents a very New York, Central Park effect, surrounded as they are, on all sides by what passes for tall buildings in Ireland.

There are no flowers, or flowerbeds (unlike the more garish, tarty Stephens Green) the walkways are practically unmetalled, with water pooling on the their surfaces after each fall of rain, and the prevading sensation is of an old english garden that has somehow gone to seed and run a little wild. Somebody has created a ridiculous stone ring of rigidly structured beds in one corner since my last visit, but thankfully none was in flower today to destroy the image of sweet, wet greenery, just after rain.

As the man says, Ace King, Check it out….

Engadget reports on a 64GB (yes sixty four, six four, gigabyte) USB key drive.

Now with a key this size I can carry around a complete copy of Windows or Linux and all my data. I no longer need a PC with a hard disk, I just need a BIOS enabled processor and a screen. Oh and a USB port…

Definitions of SWOTs

Originally uploaded by lwiner9.

Dave Winer’s dad defines SWOT.

John A. Meltaus and Larry Naughton from Choate Partners in the US gave a talk to the PDC this morning around the challenges facing Irish companies that are planning to expand into the North American market. John has particular experience in this area as he acted for Iona for many years (both pre and post IPO). Choate were also involved in the recent sale of Similarity Systems.
John made many good points in a long and free ranging presentation (made without notes or visual aids!) about the topic. What follows is a precis of some of the key points he made.

• Do you want to be a 5 million, 20 million, 200 million or 2 billion dollar company. Because that decision governs how you plan funding and expansion and whether your company will be sprinting or running a marathon.
• The primary exit strategy for Irish companies is a trade sale
• The typical tier 1 US VC has a fund size that cannot sustain typical Irish VC invesments of say €2 millon. For example Polaris Ventures fund is US$ 1 billon. Its just not economic for them to invest less than US$10 millon (and that’s just series A).
• Your business plan must encompass the economic demands of principals, investors (VCs), customers, partners and employees.
• Key mistakes for Irish companies launching in the US

• Starting too late in building a US presence
• Making the wrong first hire (The wrong first hire is General Manager, the right first hire is an SVP of Sales)
• Not having a patent strategy (Now this guys are patent lawyers, so they would say that :-))
• Not cultivating the competition
• Think about exit strategies too late

If you plan to raise US VC expect the VCs to put pressure on the company to relocate its headquarters there or at least have one of the principals move there. (As he put it, several VCs won’t invest unless they can drive to the CEO’s house)

• Make sure patents are linked to business value
• Expect to spend at least €10,000 on a complete patent application (I have heard up to €20,000 may be required in some cases)
• A provisional patent application will cost around $2000 and will give you protection while doing a full filing (e.g. if you want to disclose the patent as part of a product launch)
• In the US you have a one year grace period from the time of invention before filing the patent ( My comment: in Europe you must file prior to disclosure)

• Ignore your patent portfolio (fail to file any patents)
• Sign contracts that expose you to patent claims from other companies
• Have accelerated options that can be exercised on a sale or exit event (How can you sell an company if everybody gets to bail out on the back of the sale?)
• Exclusivity Contracts (with customers, partners), whereby they get first dibs on any sale event
• Assignment of IP, have all the respective patent/IP owners assigned their rights to the company
• Internal Controls, have you got audited accounts, all the relevant employment and customer contacts filed etc,

A very entertaining talk in all with much more going on that could be captured in the brief notes above. John is around town for the next few days so if you get an opportunity to bump into him, I’d take it…

I happened to be in Aughrim today and stopped in on The Stonecutter Cafe. I had a bowl of pasta with meatballs that renewed my faith in Italian food. The sauce was absolutely zinging with freshness and flavour and the meatballs were meltingly delicious.   The other food being served around me looked pretty mouth watering, especially the roast pork.

Well worth a detour if you are in that neck of the woods.

My buddy Ciaran (of Sentry Telecom) recorded the speakers at the Recent InterTrade Ireland Private Equity Conference. He doens’t have a blog (yet!) so I agreed to host them for the time being.

The podcasts are :

• Bert Twaalfhooven : My 34 successes and 17 failures.
• Gordon Murray : Early Stage venture capital and the role of government
• David White : The role of government and the EU in fostering innovation
• Alan Gilmore: Business Angel Discussion

Wired reports on a gizmo that makes kerrygold spreadable.

Good Essay on the MySpace phenomenon.