Global tech network for Irish start-ups

Irish entrepreneurs will have access to a global network of partners that should allow them scale at a faster rate after Dogpatch Labs became the first Irish member of Google’s Entrepreneurs Tech Hub Network.

As part of the tie-up between Dogpatch, the co-working space situated in the Dublin Docklands CHQ building, and Google brings a range of new resources to the table for start-ups in the city.

Among these are access to funding, training and mentorship opportunities as well as the Google for Entrepreneurs Global Passport where entrepreneurs based at Dogpatch can work for free in more than 20 similar start-up spaces across the world, from Seoul to Sydney; Tel-Aviv to Johannesburg.

“Our partnership with Google will allow us to increase our already significant outreach into Dublin’s start-up community.

“It will bring many benefits to Dublin’s start-ups, including mentoring programmes and access to Google engineers and expert,” said Dogpatch Labs managing director Patrick Walsh.

“This means that if you are member Dogpatch you can now hotdesk across a range of incredible co-working spaces and communities that are Google-backed around the world.”

Start-ups located at Dogpatch will also be eligible for Google product offers relevant to start-ups.

Bringing the network to Dublin where Google has its European headquarters is perhaps not surprising but a major coup nonetheless and further develops the capital’s ecosystem of startup supports.

The Dublin Start-up Commissioner’s office is doing a survey of multinationals based in the capital to gauge their current level of interaction with start-ups, in the hope of strengthening those links and putting more formal processes in place.

Google, with its ‘Foundry’ innovation centre, has been very active with yesterday’s announcement another feather in its cap in terms of supporting local businesses.

“As a former start-up ourselves opening with just five employees in Dublin, rising to 5,000 today, a passion for entrepreneurship and innovation is in our DNA.

“With Dogpatch Labs and our Google for Entrepreneurs program, we hope Dublin’s worldclass start-up community will grow that much faster, building transformative products and companies that will take the world by storm. We can’t wait to see what comes out,” said head of Google Ireland, Ronan Harris.

Dogpatch last month said it is to transform the historic vaults in the basement of the CHQ building in the IFSC into more than 740sq m of space for start-ups to host workshops and hackathons.