MORE THAN 150 tech entrepreneurs came together for the third annual F.ounders conference at the Nasdaq in New York yesterday, for an event that has become known as the "Davos for geeks".

The brainchild of Cork man Paddy Cosgrave (29) (who brought you mycandidate.ieback in 2009), F.ounders began in Dublin in 2010, and has burgeoned into one of the must-attend events for the tech start-up community.

Among those attending this year’s event – billed as an “exclusive, invite-only” gathering – were Steve Case, founder of AOL and Revolution, Dave Goldberg, the man behind SurveyMonkey, Matt Mullenweg, founder of Wordpress, Michael Birch of Bebo and David Karp of Tumblr.

They were joined by a host of other tech entrepreneurs from around the globe, along with senior executives from Facebook, Amazon and Paypal and a small group of investors.

Irish founders at the event included Harvard student Oisin Hanrahan (28), co-founder of handybook.com– an online booking system for household services which rolled out in Boston this month and is set to launch in New York this week – former Young Scientist winner, MIT drop-out and millionaire entrepreneur Patrick Collison (23), co-founder of the online payments company Stripe, and Gene Murphy (31), co-founder of Dublin-based Redeem and Get, a management system for merchants who use daily deals websites.

At yesterday’s conference Redeem and Get launched a new initiative for US companies called Deal Manager Pro.

“We’re going to start working with online marketers to make daily deals more sustainable for merchants,” said Mr Murphy.

The event was co-sponsored by IDA Ireland, whose logo flashed up on 14 giant screens around Times Square throughout the day. “This is a good space for us. It gets us into up-close contact with emerging movers and shakers,” said Barry O’Dowd, head of the IDA’s emerging business division.