Prosperity. Happiness Works.

Profitero, the digital retail analysis company, who offer a competitor monitoring service for on-line retailers have today won the Innovation Cubed 2010 competition held by the business centre, Media Cube in Dun Laoghaire. This is their second win over the last year, having already won a Seedcamp New Business Funding Award in the best start-up business category.
The Innovation Cubed  backed by Microsoft, Enterprise Ireland, Bank of Ireland and local government  launched in early December and offered a prize of a year’s free office space worth €7,500 based in the modern fast broadband facility, Media Cube. The centre is the only campus-based digital media and creative software incubation centre in the country.

The panel of judges for the event included Paul Rellis, Managing Director of Microsoft Ireland, and the overall initiative was developed by Martin Hogan, Manager of Media Cube, who himself has direct experience of leading start-up businesses.
Since opening in early 2007, Media Cube has proved successful in attracting and promoting start-ups in digital media and software, helping them to develop, facilitating networking and promoting business and research opportunities.
Speaking about the competition Hogan said:  “This initiative arose from recognising that reports extolling the virtues of supporting the smart economy were virtually worthless unless practical supports were offered to high quality start-ups and SMEs focusing on digital media.”
Commenting on winning Innovation Cubed, Founder and CEO of Profitero, Volodymyr Pigrukh said: “The last year has definitely been a good year for Profitero. Media Cube has a deserved reputation for supporting digital businesses and we are looking forward to 2011 and working in our new office!”
For further information about Media Cube, IADT go to www.mediacube.ie

As slow as things are at the moment in the Irish economy, Prosperity is witness to a huge groundswell of innovation and forward thinking amongst the many digital people we interact with on a daily basis.

People are thinking how they can do things better, bigger or differently, and we believe that these people are the vanguard of future prosperity for the  Irish economy.

The Government have made some moves to facilitate these entrepeneurs / innovators  - one example is an initiative to match dollar to dollar of venture capital funding.  And the fact is that the idea and the energy will not be always enough and that many good ideas or innovations will require funding / investment – the day will come when the idea will have to be presented to prospective investors.

We’ve all witnessed some of the pitfalls on Dragons’ Den, but we thought that the 5 slides in the following presentation might be helpful to you in putting together any future presentation. Good Luck!

http://www.businessinsider.com/these-are-the-five-slides-that-earned-me-10-million-in-funding-2010-12?slop=1#slideshow-start

Jim

The digital media and software incubation centre, Media Cube, based at Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology (IADT), is offering free office space worth €7,500 for one lucky and talented company via its Innovation Cubed competition.

This is the second year in a row that the centre has run such an event focused on identifying new digital media and creative companies with potential and rewarding the best of them.
Media Cube Manger, Martin Hogan, himself with direct experience of leading start-up businesses, has been vocal in calling for more support for start-up companies particularly in the digital sectors.
According to Hogan, “We are not short in Ireland of reports and strategy documents on the overused terms of the “smart, knowledge, green and now innovation-economies.” What we lack are real supports and funded initiatives to translate what have become clichés into well planned development assistance for start-ups and SMEs. Unless these are in place the reports produced are of little value.”
Since opening in early 2007, Media Cube has proved successful in attracting and promoting start-ups in digital media and software, helping them to develop, facilitating networking and promoting business and research opportunities.

Speaking about the competition, Hogan said: “We are targeting applications from 60 high-quality start-ups and SMEs from across the region. The finalists will receive advice from some of the most experienced businesspeople in the country and will compete to join the community of highly successful companies in Media Cube rent free for one year.”
“What we are looking for is a dynamic digital company that works on content or software, which has passed the initial start-up stage and is looking to expand and reach the next level of development and market placement. Media Cube’s goal is to support companies to achieve their potential,” he added.
The judges for Innovation Cubed are industry leaders in the sector: David McRedmond, CEO, TV3; Paul Rellis, managing director, Microsoft Ireland, and Andrew Collins, managing director and owner of 123.ie.
The 2009 winners were Richie Conroy and Mark Hodgkinson of Snowluke Pictures. The company has just produced a second series of its football series Fran, which will soon be shown on Setanta Sports.
“As a winner of the competition in 2009 we have benefited greatly from our new home. Apart from advice and support, an exciting benefit to our location in the Media Cube is working with other digital companies in the centre. The prize and recognition has given us new confidence, we have secured development deals and funding over the last year and are now looking further afield for opportunities,” said Conroy of Snowluke Pictures.
The competition, which was launched with Bartley O’Connor of PWC, will receive applications until the 3rd of December. More information is available at www.innovationcubed.ie

In a country in which people only want boys …every family continues to have children until they have a boy. If they have a girl, they have another child. If they have a boy, they stop. What is the proportion of boys to girls in the country?

15 most challenging Google interview questions :

http://thedailyedge.thejournal.ie/15-google-interview-questions-to-make-you-feel-stupid-2010-11/?utm_source=facebook#slide-slideshow1

Anyone looking for a new source of news in the morning – or at any time of the day can now access TheJournal.ie website without a password.

Jennifer O’Connell, editor of TheJournal.ie, told Prosperity that the site had been launched on a password basis at the beginning of September, but that the password requirement was removed at the beginning of this month. It is expected to move from its current public beta phase towards the end of October.
“We’re still in a beta phase which means that we are still making ongoing changes to the site, that there might be some technical problems from time to time, or we might try things out and take them down again and add new features.”
The site, which is a new venture from Eamonn and Brian Fallon of Daft.ie fame, was first opened to a very small group of less than 100 people in July to get initial feedback. “We actually made a lot of changes to the site based on that feedback,” O’Connell explains.
The reaction to date has been generally very positive, says O’Connell. “We’ve had very little negative reaction, it seems to be fulfilling a need that was there. People want something that’s a little more brisk and easily digestible than traditional news sites. I suppose because we’re very much aware that the internet is our newsbeat we make it very easy for people to share stories. We embed a lot of YouTube videos, we run a lot of image driven stories so we’re definitely fulfilling an appetite that was there among people.”
The whole premise behind the site is allowing people to read, share and shape the news, adds O’Connell. “It’s all about engaging with the users. We felt they’re the people we really want to learn from. If build a good, strong following of even very few people in the early days then hopefully it will spread through word of mouth and it will spread through recommendations and people sharing.”
Traffic wise, the site has more than doubled its expectations for the first month and on one occasion 10,000 people tried to log into the site in the space of an hour which brought the site down. “We’ve got all our back up plans in place, it won’t happen again.”
The big question for many is will the website get the required advertising. O’Connell explains that for the first six months to a year of operation the website is not under any financial pressure to get advertisers in – but at the same time it’s not turning any advertisers away. “We’re well financed and we’re able to get the content right and build up traffic and being completely traffic led rather than advertising led in the beginning which is great. It’s a very strong position to be in.”

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