Paul Walsh, the Irish Opportunist

I attended the launch of the Irish International Business Network (IIBN) in London last week. Conor Foley, co-founder and chief executive of WorldSpreads is the man behind the neat idea.

I met some great people such as Rory Dennis from Bdirect, who indecently, will soon become a Segala-certified partner.

I also met Damon from Zebtab and of course, I bumped into my fellow-networking addict, Nicola Bryne from Benchmark Capital.

I was delighted when Stephen Hughes, Director of Northern Europe for Enterprise Ireland introduced himself and asked if we could meet up to discuss how to improve the ecosystem for startups in Dublin.

I give Enterprise Ireland a hard time from time to time but it’s only because I care and would like to see them get more involved. Overall they’re great for Ireland and have supported some great companies along the way. So, forever the optimist I’m very much looking forward to meeting Stephen to see what improvements and initiatives we can make happen. I’d be very happy to see both Dublin and London forge a presence on Europe’s centre stage – with a joint venture between them.

One of the highlights of the evening was meeting Claire O’Halloran from Microsoft. I knew straight away that we have enough in common to warrant a follow up meeting. I didn’t realise just how much we had in common though, until I read her blog and exchanged a few emails. So, we’re meeting up next week to go through ‘stuff’.

Conor has asked if I’d consider joining the IIBN’s committee, so I look forward to getting involved in future events. Clair and I have agreed to get the community Web site/blog up and running. I’m sure that means we’ll get our teams to work on the project.