An Irish touchdown in Silicon Valley

The Taoiseach touched down in Silicon Valley on Wednesday June 4th on the Aer Lingus direct flight for his second official visit to the technology mecca of the world and home to the largest FDI technology employers in Ireland.

The focus of his three-day programme was on investment, jobs and the recovery of the Irish economy.

“Silicon Valley is a vitally important market for Ireland,” he said.

“Overall, 36,000 people work at US West Coast-based firms in Ireland. My visit here this week is vital in cementing and reinforcing existing investor relationships as well as building new connections with a view to securing new jobs and investment for Ireland during 2014, the year of jobs.”

Top of the elite list was his visit to Apple, the most valuable company in the world with a market cap of $560 billion, almost three times Ireland's GDP.

The Apple HQ is in Cupertino, about 30 minutes south of San Francisco.

It is here that the Taoiseach met with Apple's CEO Tim Cook who has had a busy few weeks acquiring the Beats for $3 Billion and hosting one of the best Apple worldwide developer conferences in San Francisco.

Next on the elite list was his visit to Facebook 's Menlo Park campus.

Earlier this year the Taoiseach met COO Sheryl Sandberg at the World Economic Forum in Davos where Sandberg invited him to Silicon Valley to meet the Facebook leadership and their Irish employees.

Other high-profile leaders to meet the Taoiseach included Ebay CEO John Donahue, Cisco CEO, John Chambers, Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman, LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner as well as senior executives at HP, Tesla and Google.

The Taoiseach got a warm welcome from the more than 700 Irish and Irish Americans; he rubbed shoulders with the Silicon Valley’s elite and he announced 400 new jobs for HP, Workday and Yelp.

So what does all this mean?

Traditionally the East Coast has been the number one destination for Irish politicians visiting the political and financial powerhouses of Washington and Wall Street and of course the Irish American bastions of Boston and Chicago.

However, Ireland in the 21st century has stepped up to be the Silicon Valley of Europe with our talent, tax rate and gateway to 500 million European customers.

Let's also give rightful credit to the IDA for an outstanding job landing the world leading technology companies over the last three decades – Ireland has the who's who of technology companies with Apple, Amazon, Intel, HP, Cisco, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, LinkedIn, Twitter to name but a few.

The fact is that these technology companies employ over 36,000 people in Ireland and are growing rapidly even during Ireland’s financial crisis.

Guess what? All of these companies are headquartered on the West Coast and centred in Silicon Valley – the valley is the number one location on the planet for innovation, technology and investment.

It is also the number one location for venture capital where it represents 40 per cent of all VC investment in the United States.

Its closest rival is Boston, which represents 11 per cent of US investment.

The valley is also a crucial destination for our own home-grown technology companies and entrepreneurs who are winning customers and investment there.

Limerick's young Collison brothers are a great example of that with their payments platform company, Stripe, now valued at $1.75 billion.

So, if you were to look forward to Ireland’s future you can certainly say that innovation and technology will lead our economy with more foreign direct investment and hopefully we will see more Irish entrepreneurs creating multibillion-dollar companies.

The connection and relationships in Silicon Valley are critical to our FDI technology employees and Irish entrepreneurs.

Ask any business person and they will tell you that building relationships is critical to business and if our Taoiseach can meet the elite leaders in Silicon Valley then this is good for business, investment, employment and Ireland.

So, in that respect, this must go down as one the most important visits to Silicon Valley.

Lets not leave it too long for a return trip to the sunshine coast and a bowl of Shamrock for Tim Cook might be the cool thing to do in 2015.

John Hartnett is founder and CEO of SVG Partners and the Irish Technology Leadership Group (ITLG)