New ‘Startup Gathering’ to showcase entrepreneurship

A new national week of events to promote entrepreneurship and showcase Ireland’s startup sector has been announced as part of the latest Action Plan for Jobs.

The 'Startup Gathering, ' which will be held across Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Galway and Waterford from October 5th, will be a five-day event-led programme focusing on five key industry sectors - ICT, medical devices, biopharma, agri/food and business services.

It is hoped that more than 50 events and networking opportunities nationally will be run under the Gathering umbrella during the week.

Among the events planned are hackers and founders team building events, diaspora networking events, entrepreneur career fairs, and a national ‘Startup Demo Day’ where entrepreneurs can pitch to top accelerators, investors, mentors and corporates.

The initiative will kick off with an annual conference for Ireland's startup sector and end with a state dinner on the theme of 'Why invest in Ireland's startup sector' hosted by Minister for Jobs Richard Bruton.

"The future growth of Ireland's economy in terms of innovation and jobs is closely linked to the performance of Ireland's startup sector therefore we need far more people creating startups here. Our goal with The Startup Gathering is to encourage more of our population to consider entrepreneurship as a real career choice and make the move on startups ideas they have," said Startup Ireland co-founder Eoin Costello.

Encouraging emigrants with good startup ideas to return to Ireland to build their business here form a key theme of the initiative, Mr Costello said. To this end, Startup Ireland is to lead an international Kickstarter campaign to raise a ‘Diaspora Startup Fund’ to support the flights to Ireland of 50 Irish emigrants for the Gathering to investigate pursuing their startup opportunity here.