This year may be the last time that the Web Summit is held in Ireland, according to the event's founder Paddy Cosgrave.
Speaking at the Web Summit’s 2015 launch in the company’s headquarters this morning, Mr. Cosgrave said the company was in negotiations with a number of cities, including Lisbon and Dublin, but that no decision has been made as yet.
“Since the very first event that we held in Ireland we’ve been approached. In 2011 we held meetings in Number 10 Downing Street, and anyone who was at the summit last year would have noticed the amount of foreign state agencies,” he said.
Mr Cosgrave did not go into detail about the factors that might prompt a relocation of the event but said that Dublin would always be the company’s home
According to Fáilte Ireland, last year’s Web Summit was worth an estimated €100million to the Irish economy.
New additions to this year’s summit include Office Hours; a form of speed dating where start ups can sit down with leading investors to discuss their projects. An Angel Summit meanwhile will provide an opportunity for 500 Angel investors to meet each other through social events and round table discussions prior to the Web Summit beginning.
Other new features include a fashion and a healthtech summit bringing the total number of summits to 21.
Guest speakers will include Tinder's chief executive Sean Rad, Pixar founder Ed Catmull, Tour de France winner Chris Froome and Dan Brown, author of The Da Vinci Code.
Since 2010, approximately 3000 start-ups who attended the summit have raised on average €394,448 each, with a cumulative total of around €1.2 billion, according to figures released by the Web Summit.
Wi-fi connectivity was a huge issue for the summit last year and Mr Cosgrave said that they are still in negotiations about provision for this year’s service.
The 2015 Web Summit takes places from November 3rd to the 5th in the RDS with over 30,000 visitors from around the world expected to attend, beating last year’s attendance of 22,500.
According to Mr Cosgrave, 90 per centof visitors to the event are international and for the first time ever they will have the option to register on arrival at Dublin Airport.
