Republic’s tech firms ‘must raise revenues’

IF IRISH technology companies are to really compete at an international level, they need to upscale their revenues to €100 million plus.

One of the potential drivers to this is if acquisition-led strategy becomes an integral part of Irish companies.

This is according to Mark Fenelon, director at Whitebridge Capital who said this approach is not widespread.

Mr Fenelon was speaking at the launch of an international acquisitions conference, entitled Creating Scale Through Acquisition, which is begin held in Dublin next month.

“It is nearly impossible to grow single product companies into revenues of €100m plus.

“New products, applications, channels, management teams and sales personnel must be added.

“Through the right acquisitions you pick up channels; you pick up additional products; you gather engineering and sales resources; you now have a fighting chance of achieving scale.

“There is unwarranted scepticism among Irish companies around high failure rates of acquisitions.

“Recent research has shown that acquisition growth strategies do create superior returns and drive higher exit values, if managed correctly,” said Mr Fenelon.

Leonie Tierney, a senior member of Whitebridge’s US team said Irish companies need to transition from being software companies that sell products to companies that sell products which happen to be software.

International speakers such as Google’s head of corporate development, Anil Hansjee; Library House’s vice president of European research, Richard Youngman and partner with US law firm Choate Hall & Stewart LLP, Larry Naughton will be at the event.

Whitebridge Capital is an Irish corporate finance house set up 18 months ago with an exclusive focus on the technology and life sciences sectors.

It has a wide network of US, European and local venture capitalists and has recently opened an office in Boston to further enhance its US network.