Mr. Eoin Costello:

The issue of scaling is a multi-factorial problem. It involves access to capital and markets but when one boils it down, it comes down to what Ms Buckley spoke about in terms of Stripe and the Collison brothers. They moved to the US because the scale of their ambition was for a €1-billion valuation company. The research examined the difference between Silicon Valley, Tel Aviv, Dublin and London. The entrepreneur's ambition in Silicon Valley and London was for $1-billion valuation companies. Otherwise, they would not get out of bed for it. In respect of the average entrepreneur in Ireland - a lifestyle business possibly employing three or four staff - do we talk to the broad mass of people embarking on entrepreneurship? We focus on the really motivated and passionate people and the kind of ambition that will scale up those companies, take on the obstacles when they pass the €200-million or €300-million valuations and keep going. In a sentence, it is about the scale of ambition of entrepreneurs. Our culture is not ambitious enough for our entrepreneurial ecosystem, so we must be ambitious. We must create the framework conditions whereby we can help people scale up faster and overcome those obstacles faster and stop losing our high-impact entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial talent to other start-up ecosystems like Silicon Valley or London.