Home techs use soundbite to oust rivals

For the last few bull-market years, the words of choice in the technology and dot.com business were mindshare, market dominance, and that holy grail, IPO (initial public offering).

But that's all changed, judging by the 10 Irish tech start-ups which made three-minute "elevator pitches" in European technology magazine Tornado-Insider's Super Nova competition to find the top European tech newcomer company.

Elevator pitches are fast-paced company spiels designed to entice an imaginary venture capitalist one has briefly cornered in an elevator.

Based on the pitches, a country winner will be chosen from 11 European states to advance to a final at Disneyworld Paris on May 7th.

The 10 Irish firms - which produce everything from e-commerce, customer relationship management and online trading software to Internet games - never even uttered the word IPO and instead made sober pitches noting their solid business models, partnerships, and first funding rounds.

For example, Mr Tom Skinner of Parallel Internet cut to the chase immediately, describing his firm as "a profitable and proven company" with "a revenue model already in place".

MobileAware's spokeswoman managed to squeeze in that the company had backing from Intel, just as the three-minute siren went off.

Several competitors were more adept at explaining their business model than their business, and left observers unsure about what, exactly, the company did.

Nonetheless there was plenty of time to winkle out the details after at a postpitch party, which made many nostalgic for the old dotcom boom-and-booze days.

"There's a huge amount of gloom out there but we're upbeat," said Mr David Dalton, managing director of Dublin consultancy HotOrigin, which co-hosted the event.

He said the Republic had many people who had "deep experience in building successful global companies".

He noted the availability of "smart money" for early-stage funding of good companies.

The 10 Irish finalists are: Trust5, Deep Insight, WebBusters, Emergent Software, MineIT, Kapooki Games, Parallel Internet, Skills QED, Broker-Focus and MobileAware.

The Irish winner will be announced later this month.