Ireland consolidates its position as the no 1 location for early stage start-up companies setting up in Western Europe

An Taoiseach Enda Kenny TD with the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation Mary Mitchell O’Connor TD today announced the creation of 215 new jobs for Dublin and Waterford from 9 North American and European based high growth companies. 

The investments are supported by the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation through IDA Ireland.

The new jobs will be spread across a number of sectors with a range of activities such as software engineering, finance, sales, technology, customer support, operations and marketing.

The companies creating the new jobs are:

(40) Endura Technologies (International) Ltd, a fabless semiconductor company providing power management solutions to the microelectronics industry, is adding 40 engineers to its Irish operations resulting in a 50+ strong R&D team by the end of 2018. The company also announced the positive progress of its design implementation in advanced FinFET process node based on silicon measurements. This follows earlier announcement of commercial partnership between Endura Technologies and MediaTek that aims at demonstrating power, performance, and area improvements at advanced process nodes.

(35) MacStadium, the Mac hosting authority and largest provider of Apple^® Mac Pro private cloud infrastructure-as-a-service around the world, announced today that it has established its first European data centre and international headquarters in Dublin, creating 35 information technology jobs over the course of 3 years.

(35) Smartfrog, a leading ‘Internet of Things’ (IoT) start-up, today announced that it will create 35 new jobs at its Dublin Office. Smartfrog chose Ireland for its high tech ecosystem, ease of access to the English speaking markets, and availability of talent. Smartfrog is currently recruiting across a range of positions including Finance, Sales, Marketing and support roles. Forbes recently listed Smartfrog as one of the top 25 global IoT Startups and one of the 10 most-funded.

(20) Cloudbeds, a leader in hospitality property management system software, announces their plans to create approximately 20 new jobs over the next two years at their Dublin office. Since opening their Dublin office in January of 2015, they’ve seen tremendous growth in the Irish and European markets. The new roles will focus on customer support and European-based sales.

(20) Energenetics, a global provider of talent development solutions, announced the opening of its EMEA headquarters in Dublin’s IFSC to serve its growing international client base. With its roots in Denver, Colorado, USA, Emergenetics EMEA plans to hire 20 people for its Dublin office over the next 3 years. Roles will include operations and client services, business development, company trainers, and office administration.

(20) Telnyx – a leading next generation provider of wholesale real-time communications and VoIP services, announced today that it has established its global presence by opening a new office in Dublin. The Dublin location marks the startup’s second branch, with its headquarters in Chicago. Telnyx plans to hire up to 20 network, develops and site reliability engineers in the next year to create a full platform engineering team to support global deployments. Recruitment is already underway. Separately, they are building a technical network operations centre and a service centre to offer customers more coverage and availability across a wide range of time zones and languages.

(15) Compar AG, a leader in specialised image processing and robotics provider today announced it will establish an Engineering Development and Sales Centre in Waterford, with the creation of 15 highly skilled jobs over the next few years.

(15) Paragon 28, Inc. is a privately held Medical Device Company focusing exclusively on the Foot & Ankle segment of Orthopedics. The company was established in 2010 in Denver, Colorado to research, develop and market products that will ultimately redefine this immature segment of the Orthopedics market. Since its inception, Paragon 28 has become one of the fastest growing companies in Orthopedics and is excited to expand into the EMEA market. Paragon 28 is hopeful to hire as many as 15 employees over the next year for functions such as engineering, operations, accounting, marketing and quality.

 (15) TPGS a leading international financial and economic modelling service provider, today announced the opening of an office in Dublin. The announcement comes just three months after the company confirmed its plans to extend its global reach, and will create 15 jobs in Ireland.

 Making today’s announcement An Taoiseach Enda Kenny TD said ‘The Government remain strongly focused on employment and on the implementation of our annual Action Plan for Jobs. Earlier this week the Cabinet signed off on the Third Quarterly Report on the Action Plan for Jobs 2016. Under the Action Plan 176,000 new jobs have been created. I would like to thank the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation and her officials for the hard work they are undertaking.’
Speaking at today’s announcement Minister Mitchell O’Connor TD said she warmly welcomed these new companies. “Ireland has been very successful in attracting investment projects from many of the big international players across a range of sectors.  We intend to be just as successful in securing investment from the rising generation of early stage, high growth companies as well. It is terrific news that this group of companies, who are at the forefront of their technologies have decided to locate in Ireland and I look forward to their future expansion here”

 Welcoming today’s announcement Martin Shanahan, CEO IDA Ireland said “According to fDi Markets, Ireland is the market leader in winning 20 – 100 job projects from early stage, fast growth companies with revenues of less than €30m over the period 2010 – 2016 from US and European companies. IDA Ireland has a clearly defined strategy to deliver these early stage projects and today’s announcement of a further 9 companies setting up here illustrates the success of that strategy. These companies are creating jobs across a range of activities and offer a chance for candidates to get involved at an early stage leading to promising career progression in exciting high growth companies. We look forward to partnering with these companies as they scale from Ireland.”

 Notes

fDiMarkets.com follows this market segment as part of its cross border investment monitor. Ireland is the market leader as the destination country for FDI flows from North America to Europe during 2010 -2016. During this period Ireland has won 47.5% of the projects and 47.7% of the companies. The top three locations were Ireland, UK and France. Ireland ranked extremely favourably in terms of destination cities with four cities Dublin, Galway, Cork and Limerick featuring in the Top 10 winning a combined market share of 45%.With regards to the sources of US projects San Francisco was the leader 20 – 13.99% followed by NYC 13 – 9.09% and Chicago 5 – 3.5%Sectorally Software and IT services accounted for over two thirds of the business with 69%.

Within the early stage company space Ireland has performed very well in market share terms. According to fDi Markets Research Ireland is the market leading number 1 destination country for early stage companies from the US setting up in Europe and is the number 3 for Western European companies setting up in Western Europe. Overall for the combined US and Western European sourced projects Ireland is number 1 with 39% market share followed by the UK with 24% market share.

In recent years, IDA Ireland as part of its strategy has focused more on early stage fast growth companies. Through this strategy a number of prestigious project wins were achieved such as Indeed.com, Riot Games and Etsy.   Significant marquee names have become reference sites for Ireland including Zendesk, Squarespace, MongoDB, Qualtrics, New Relic and more.