Ms Niamh Bushnell:

Again, through my lens as a person who has been back five months since leaving the United States, there is an over-emphasis here on funding in the early stages. Early on start-ups are concerned about getting funding, which is not the case in the United States, partly because such funding is not available. One cannot get early stage funding in the United States for feasibility studies, demonstrations and so on to build a minimum viable product, MVP. People get on with it by looking to friends and family to support them and "bootstrap". It is great to provide funding in the early stages, but I am concerned that companies may spend more time focusing on securing the funding than figuring the market they are entering. I would love to see more emphasis on validating the market and predicating the funding on market validation at certain stages. One does not have to have the complete map of the market in one's hands, but I still see companies that focus on funding and when they get it, they still have not figured the product market fit, what the market looks like, how big it is, who the customers and competitors are and not spent time in the market pressing the flesh. Sometimes in Ireland it feels a little like putting the cart before the horse when it comes to early stage funding.

Later stage funding is hard to get, as everybody says. Here it is hard to get series A, B or C funding. It is challenging to obtain funding in excess of €1 million.

Anyway, the good news is that then we co-invest with great partners in the United States and the United Kingdom. They bring that smart-market focus or emphasis to the start-up to help it to get into those markets.

We need more later-stage funding for companies here. It is all about scaling. I joke that an entrepreneur is a tourist until she starts scaling. A woman is not an entrepreneur until she starts scaling a business. Ideally, it is not until she has revenue but at the least she must have customers. Until an entrepreneur has a product she is not at the races. It is a question of lean, lean, lean until she can get to there. Then, we should focus all our support on picking winners and helping those companies to scale with funding, market intelligence, role models and mentoring etc. That is my view generally on the matter.