The Irish Tech Startups Business - Facts & Figures

From TechIreland. 

TechIreland public database shows more than 2,300 active tech startups and scaleups, over 400 Multinationals and 280+ innovation hubs. Three hundred domestic and international investors have funded Irish tech businesses and Ireland is now home to some of the world’s leading deep-tech and disruptive tech companies that are helping transform our work and lives.

The Irish Tech startups are categorised into 13 distinct industry sectors:

  1. HealthTech
  2. FinTech
  3. Enterprise Solutions
  4. CleanTech
  5. EdTech
  6. Consumer/eCommerce
  7. IndustrialTech
  8. Telecom
  9. Entertainment/SportsTech
  10. MediaTech
  11. Agri/Food
  12. TravelTech
  13. Cybersecurity

Number of companies

  • Health/MedTech is the strongest sector with 400 companies that between them have raised over €2Billion to date - a huge figure, as befits a sector that requires enormous funding for research and development.
  • Enterprise Solutions leads with 500 active startups and scaleups.
  • FinTech is a distant third with 200 startups but conversely, fintech companies employ more than the top two sectors combined.
  • There are between 150 and 200 startups in each of eCommerce, IndustrialTech and Entertainment/SportsTech.
  • And just over a hundred companies each in Agri/Food, EdTech, CleanTech and TravelTech.
  • Security, AdTech and Telecom each have fewer than a hundred startups, but they include very large success stories like Netwatch, Ding and Cubic Telecom.

Employment

  • Most of the jobs are accounted for by a few very large companies.
  • The top 12 employers, each with over 1000 employees, account for nearly 40% of the jobs.
  • Some of the very large Irish tech businesses include Fexco and Taxback in FinTech, Welocalise and Kainos in Enterprise Software, Randox in HealthTech and AMCS in CleanTech.
  • Smaller startups make up the bulk of the numbers of companies, but only a small fraction of the jobs.
  • While the companies that have attracted the most investment don’t always feature among the largest employers, nevertheless the scaleups that each have raised over €100Million are now employing close to 22,000 here.

The funding/Investment

  • The funding needed to create jobs can vary dramatically.
  • For instance, OLX Oncology has raised over €100 Million and employs around 30 people, whereas FinTech businesses can create a lot more jobs. For example, Fenergo now has over 700 employees.
  • Only half of all Irish startups have been successful in attracting investors.
  • Of the 2,300 active startups, 923 have disclosed publicly that they raised some funding - big or small.
  • Of those, 300 have raised less than a hundred thousand euros.
  • Others might not have needed to raise funding or might have decided not to disclose their funding and investors.
  • This suggests that more than 50% of startups have bootstrapped and are growing organically by generating revenue - But when it comes to employment - between them, they have created over 54,000 jobs!

While most of the Irish tech companies are fairly recent arrivals, many traditional businesses have successfully reinvented themselves by pivoting into Artificial Intelligence, the Internet of Things (IoT) and Software as a Service (SaaS). 

Visit www.techireland.org to view full profiles of companies.

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