DISQUS

We had a great pass through NY last summer & the firm favourites for our boys of nine, seven and five were -
1) The Nintendo store down by the Rockefeller Centre. I have to admit I even enjoyed the buzz and the free game play. Your average Apple store pales in comparison.
2) Central Park playground, it was a scorching hot day & boys stripped to shorts & spent 2 very happy hours darting in and out of the water fountains and up and down the climbing rock.
3) and this is the odd one, they loved the UN building tour..
Great times.

start-up = any new/ish company not hung up on conventions, e.g. defining a start-up. who cares?

"the inconvenience of physical books" Philistine thou art..

Great improvement - far easier to read. thks also for Dimon vid. great content

Hi Nic

Wouldn't place too much reliance on Minitel numbers as they (+ Juniper ETC.) get lost in a research haze of statistics. Better to focus on addressable retail as nobody is ever going to buy a mars bar online. Here I go direct to source - 18% of all Argos sales are now ordered online and Littlewoods, Findal and other mail order titans are at 50%+ from a base of zero five years ago.
IMRG are probably closer to the retail pulse and they have online retail at 15% of the UK pot.

Nic, that new picture looks nothing like you, and besides money men never wear brown! You must have one in the deck sans shades but without the brown wolley look....

Yo Paul, I personally never tire of hearing about companies doing well out of EI. Always good to hear good news and I use that info to refine my own pitch for support. If I fail to secure that support, I blame myself. They failed to understand because I failed to sell.
You hit the nail on the head as you have to "know 'who' to talk to and 'how' to talk to them". Self critical appriasal of your sales pitch is productive. Lashing out in frustration at EI is not, even if it does make for good blog copy.

Michele, I rest my case!
Others though will require external funding to replicate your success, and hopefully EI and others will help them here.
Success will be dependent on their ability to sell as this negates any lack of understanding on the funders side.

There are many web based businesses in Ireland which would not exist if it were not for EI support. Can they improve? sure they can but they are not as bad as you paint them.

EI have to move with the times but then so do Irish entrepreneurs - we need to lose our dependency culture where we seem to expect EI to fund/support what the VC's reject.
EI likes to back winners and so the best way of securing their support is by first selling your product to customers and/or VC's.
They are not in the business of creating billionaires ala youtube or skype - neither of which relied on state hand outs to build their business.

I don't think I've ever heard any US entrepreneur complaining/blogging about State/Federal support for start ups. It's not even on their radar screen but it seems to pre-occupy us on this side of the pond.

I suspect the PV crew might be picking up the message - on yer bike and sell your business/product and EI is just one of those sales.