Silicon Valley doesn't have any equivalent of Dr Tony O'Reilly. We lack such a larger-than-life, swashbuckling Irish merchant prince. But of course the place is full of Irish and Irish wannabes.
These people are rich pickings for the various Irish trade and industrial development organisations operating in the Bay Area. They provide valuable advice and guidance from inside the technology giants and can also act as conduits for smaller Irish companies wanting to do business with Intel, 3Com, Apple and the other Silicon Valley companies with Irish operations.
As the concept of "industrial development" becomes more sophisticated, Irish development agencies benchmark themselves against such success stories as the Israeli BIRD (Binational Industrial R&D Foundation) which has funded 500 projects in its 20 years of operation according to its website (www.birdf.com). The foundation has done an excellent job of pairing US and Israeli companies in jointly-funded partnerships, where it can approve funding of up to $100,000 (£66,309) within weeks.
In this way, it not only provides an incentive for Israeli entrepreneurs and technologists, but it keeps the intellectual property, and therefore the opportunity for growth, in Israel. This is, of course, self-fulfilling. Because US companies can work with these Israeli-based companies in a partnership environment, the US organisations are left with the impression of technological prowess that can be further tapped in Israel.
By contrast, Irish industrial development thus far has been extremely successful in convincing US and other multinationals to locate manufacturing in Ireland for financial, demographic and geographic reasons. Only when those companies set up Irish operations do they begin to consider R&D projects, and then they will carry them out largely in-house. This is a generalisation, but it contrasts the experience of multinationals in Ireland versus Israel, and these impressions are slow to change.
So the goal of the more sophisticated industrial development agencies is not "let's get a factory at the end of some God-forsaken road", but "let's find a way to encourage indigenous entrepreneurs, harness that brainpower within Ireland and provide conduits for business development overseas". It's a tougher challenge, and a more subtle one. But ultimately, by encouraging locally-owned but globally-focused companies, the result should be a more stable employment base.
To aid in this effort of retaining the intellectual property in Ireland while offering Irish entrepreneurs business expansion opportunities in the US, one agency, Enterprise Ireland, is testing the idea of a mentor programme here in Silicon Valley. According to Mr Larry Mone, one of the local emissaries for Enterprise Ireland, the goal here is to "help entrepreneurs develop a business, not just make a sale". The mentor programme is starting off gradually, trying to match a few successful Irish entrepreneurs here with Irish start-ups.
The idea is to create a database of "friendly sources of intelligence", as Mr Mone terms it. The mentors will share business ideas and open doors to the intricate, dynamic business networks in the Bay Area, where it's not who you know, it's who knows you that counts. The mentors might even like what they see enough to take an equity position in the company. Mr Mone calls this "intelligent money" rather than the straight cash-for-shareholding exchange that a less involved investment would deliver.
So who are these mentors, these gatekeepers to the riches of Silicon Valley?
One of the first is a successful entrepreneur in her own right, who has taken a fast route from student emigrant to boardroom. Ms Laura Fay, president and chief operating officer of Sharedata - which has recently been acquired for around $30 million by online brokerage E-Trade - was offered a job in San Diego, California, by Compucorp when she graduated from Trinity College Dublin. "I thought about the offer for two seconds," she says, before she accepted and moved over to start her US career in 1983. She left a couple of years later to co-found a start-up, Retix, which she built to a staff of 350, a technology leadership position and a successful public offering. After a stint at Lotus Development, where she directed a $20 million annual R&D budget, Ms Fay joined Sharedata in 1997.
Ms Fay's advice to budding Irish entrepreneurs is to get their feet wet in the US. "Go to work for a small US company that does interesting things," she advises. "A small company gets you closer to the elements, and can expose you to the venture capital community, which working in a larger organisation is unlikely to do."
Ms Fay is interested in helping Irish companies strengthen their own networks, maintaining that "success is largely a function of how they can connect to the right people and resources".
"Of course," she adds, "if you've got something to offer in return, that helps." So, Irish entrepreneurs, as you step on that westbound plane, remember the immortal words of famous baseball player Yogi Berra: "you can observe a lot by watching". And also add this Yogi-ism to the "todo" list on your "palm pilot": "when you come to a fork in the road, take it."
Frank O'Mahony can be contacted at frank@liffey.com
