Dublin entered the official digital schmoozing scene this week with the advent of First Tuesday, an informal networking group.
More than 200 Internet industry professionals and the venture capitalists who might like to fund them, gathered in Dublin pub Zanzibar to talk shop, pitch projects, make contacts and maybe secure a few million in backing. As the organisers' press release hopefully stated: "The idea is that a recently graduated student can bump into someone with a £50 million fund, have a chat, and who knows?"
"It's a unique occasion when vision, ideas and money come together in the same room," said the evening's speaker, Mr Colm Grealy, co-founder and former managing director of Internet service provider Ireland On-Line.
Mr Grealy said he and IOL's other co-founder, Mr Barry Flanagan, were "very much in the same boat as everybody here", building a new Internet business - of which he would say little - and seeking contacts.
The Dublin group is one of more than 24 in cities across Europe and in Sydney, Australia. The First Tuesday idea originated 11 months ago with four Internet professionals in London, who based the group - so-named because it meets on the first Tuesday of every month - on the laid-back social networking groups in Silicon Valley.
Some 2,500 people now belong to the London group and events are so popular that locations are kept secret and tickets must be allocated by lottery, according to the Wall Street Journal. More than 700 people applied for tickets for the 400 places at Tuesday's London soiree.
While recent graduates did not seem too plentiful in Dublin, there was plenty of that other Internet-era phenomenon, the 20-something managing director. Prominent among them was Mr Rory Ardagh (25), director of high-speed networking company Formus Communications Ireland, the event's corporate sponsor.
Mr Ardagh said he and his brother, Charlie, also a company officer, heard about First Tuesday a month and a half ago and decided the concept could help spur the development of the Internet industry in the Republic by bringing like-minded people together.
When he first sought funding for his own company, Mr Ardagh said it was difficult to get Irish financiers to understand the idea of the business. "We found it easier to raise money in the States," he said. First Tuesday should help Net entrepreneurs to connect with venture capitalists and bankers here who can make sense of bits and bytes, he said.
According to Mr Grealy, £600 million (€762 million) in potential funding was represented by the dozen or so venture capitalists, or VCs, in the crowd, two of whom had flown in from London for the event. Unsurprisingly, the VCs, who wore blue name badges to make them easier targets for eager ideaholders, proved highly popular.
Mr Ardagh expressed astonishment at the number who showed at relatively short notice for the first meeting. "We were expecting a nice intimate little thing, with 40 or 50 people," he said. Instead, 220 kept the conversation and exchanges of business cards going from 6.30 p.m. until closing time.
Anyone interested in attending the second meeting on October 5th can call Mr David Neville at (01) 403 8494 or e-mail firsttuesdaydublin@eGroups.com.
