Attendees at a past Startup Grind event in Dublin. Image via Darren Mulvihill
The seaside town of Blackrock in south Co Dublin could see swarms of self-starters descend upon its streets this evening. That’s because there’s a free Startup Grind kicking off at 6pm in the offices of Lucey Technology.
Irish software and video-games serial entrepreneur Dylan Collins will be there to impart his insights on things like the challenge in building a scalable enterprise, breaking out of Ireland and the practice of achieving growth by acquiring other start-ups.
Collins will be taking part in a fireside chat with Darren Mulvihill, who is behind the Irish chapter of Startup Grind – a global start-up community designed to educate, inspire, and connect entrepreneurs.
This evening’s event will be taking place in the new offices of Lucey Technology, where Mulvihill works as head of seed investing of the Lucey Fund.
There will be beer and pizza for attendees, according to Mulvihill. And people will also have the opportunity to network and share ideas after Collins’ talk.
Getting in at the right time
The Dylan Collins story has been well-told by now. While a student at Trinity College Dublin in the late 1990s, Collins decided to go down the start-up route, co-founding Phorest with Sean Blanchfield and Ronan Perceval in 2000. (Perceval still runs Phorest).
Collins also started gaming technology company Demonware with Blanchfield in 2003. And then, in 2007, Activision acquired Demonware for an estimated US$15m.
Fired up from the Demonware acquisition, Collins then spawned a games start-up called Jolt Online. GameStop acquired that venture in 2008.
Collins stayed on as CEO of Jolt Online until April 2011. GameStop wrapped up Jolt in 2012, however. In an interview with Siliconrepublic.com earlier this year, Collins said Jolt helped ignite a number of spin-outs in Dublin, including Digit Games Studios.
Latest pursuits
Since then, Collins, who hails from Mullinahone in south Tipperary, has been dipping his creative fingers into a few other digital pies.
His most recent venture, for instance, is Box of Awesome – a digital venture that creates boxes of digital and physical goodies for eight-to-14-year-olds. This is part of a venture called SuperAwesome – a discovery platform for kids and teens in the UK that Collins co-founded in late 2012.
Today, Collins also lends his start-up expertise to a number of digital companies. He is a non-executive director of the Dublin-based animation company Brown Bag Films and is chairman of the digital marketing firm Potato.
He is also Enterprise Ireland’s ‘Startup Ambassador’ to promote the agency’s €10m International Startup Investment Fund – this targets global start-ups to come to Ireland to set up shop and tap into the start-up ecosystem.
Time to register
Mulvihill said there is still time for people to register online for this evening’s free Startup Grind. The event will run from 6-9pm.
Startup Grind events are hosted monthly in more than 40 cities and 20 countries. The aim of the event series is to give a platform to local founders, innovators, educators and investors to share personal stories and lessons learned on the road to building companies.
