National pride, favourable tax regimes and entrepreneurship were all talking points at the web summit, says ADAM MAGUIRE

FOR AN industry often laden in vague terminology and jargon, there was a welcome measure of straight-talking on offer at the latest Dublin Web Summit, last week.

Sean Seton Rogers, general partner at venture capitalist firm PROfounders, started proceedings by urging the Irish and wider European technology industries to stop complaining about what it is not: “Nobody in New York bitches about not being Silicon Valley. They celebrate what makes them different.

“We should stop talking about Silicon Valley as the only place of importance in tech,” he said to rapturous applause. “Europe is producing tech companies [even if] they don’t come from the same formula as big US companies.”

Brian Caulfield, partner at DFJ Esprit, took this point one step further and spoke of his hatred of the “next Google” label which he said people should stop looking for.

“There is only one Google and, if you look at Europe historically, the largest venture exit of all time was Skype, which was a $3 billion exit,” he said. “If you look at the scale of Skype compared to Google, it’s tiny.”

Rogers and Caulfield were speaking as part of a panel discussion on venture capitalism with the latter being reasonably optimistic about Ireland’s potential for birthing an influential new company.

“I don’t think anybody knows where the next company of that quality is coming from; it’s as likely to be Ireland as it is to be Lithuania or Sweden or Denmark.”

Dylan Collins, chief executive of Jolt online gaming, was also characteristically blunt in his address encouraging people to “play up the Irish thing because it works”. He went on to list the numerous negative reactions he got to his business ideas over the years and advised those in the room to “control their consultants” and ensure they hire well.

He was followed by YouTube founder Chad Hurley, who clearly sensed the air of honesty in the room and decided to come clean about his own company’s recent history.

“I would have preferred we stayed independent but we were growing so fast that we needed someone to come in to help with capacity,” he said. “Being realistic, and as we were trying to ramp up our ad solutions, it made sense to work with Google.”

With the second day split into four streams, each address became more targeted. At the start-up stream, Perlico founder Iain McDonald echoed Dylan Collins’ advice of hiring well and ignoring consultants.

“Listen to the people whom you genuinely respect and who know what they’re talking about; with everybody else just smile and nod and then walk off.” He also advised people to find themselves a good husband, wife or partner to whom they could vent and to prepare to work very hard in the first few years.

Serial entrepreneur Jonathan Siegel followed McDonald and took a different tack – outlining his experience with failure which, he said, was the real test of someone’s business acumen. “The market will always send you surprises. Being a good entrepreneur is about recognising if you’re in a dip that you need to push through or if you’re in a cul de sac,” he said.

While much of the advice given throughout the event was aimed at increasing an individual company’s chances of success, one stream in particular looked at Ireland’s place in the wider industry. The Gaming stream, which took place on Friday afternoon, featured experts with a range of experiences in the Irish and world gaming market.

Much of the talk was about the State’s potential to become a big player in games development. “When you see one or two successes you can attribute it to chance but when you see a succession of successful indigenous companies you have to sit up and take note,” said David Coghlan, managing director of Havok. He added that the gaming industry had opened up significantly in recent years.

Barry O’Neill of Other Ventures pointed to Montreal as a blueprint for Ireland’s success and said a more favourable tax regime for developers was required. If Ireland could match the Canadian city in this regard, he said, it would be at an automatic advantage due to the added bonus of a low corporation tax rate.

“We have a great games industry here but we really need to turbo boost it to get it to compete with the likes of Montreal,” he said. “If we attract key talent to the country, we can then up-skill our indigenous workforce to help create the kind of AAA titles we see coming from other places.”

Datahug wins spark of genius award

Business networking application DataHug was named winner of the Maples Calder Spark of Genius competition at the closing event of the Dublin Web Summit. The product offers to identify the strongest links within a company between staff and clients or potential contacts.

DataHug was one of five companies that pitched their idea to the crowd on the summit's opening night. It picks up a prize worth more than €30,000. This includes €10,000 worth of legal fees from Maples Calder and €10,000 worth of hosting services from Dediserve.

"Were very much in the relationship business and in helping businesses see who knows who," said Connor Murphy, who founded the company along with business partner Ray Smith.

DataHug works by applying its algorithm to the contents of an e-mail inbox, from which it gauges the quality of the relationship between the owner and their contacts.

From that it applies a "HugRank" which in turn helps indicate who has the best relationship with different people.