Last week was an incredibly busy but memorable week for a number of reasons.
The first highlight came when I was notified that I was awarded the business person of the month award by Business and Finance magazine. This came on the back of an announcement by Realex Payments that we are recruiting 50 people to continue our expansion. Previous winners include Michel O’Leary and Christoph Mueller, so it’s quite an honour for me! A big thank you to Business and Finance for this award.
The second highlight came in the guise of F.ounders event which took place alongside the Dublin Web Summit; I have to say it was an incredible experience.
Realex Payments have supported the DWS since it began and the October event was the biggest yet, attracting some 1,200 people to the RDS.
I opened on the main stage on Thursday morning with a presentation on “Beyond Innovation”. I also took part in the panel discussion about the future of money on Friday afternoon. Sitting on the stage alongside Paypal, Dwolla and Wonga chatting about the future of money gave me a really good feeling. There was a lot of discussion about disrupting the payments industry; we all hope that our new Carapay (www.carapay.com) model is one that will bring significant disruption to the payments market – that’s for sure.
I joined the F.ounders event on Thursday evening at a reception in the library in Trinity, followed by a great meal in the Trinity dining room – at which Bono joined us. I sat opposite Eric Ly, one of the Linked In founders. After dinner we were treated to an orchestra and jazz band.
I spent most of Friday at the DWS and headed back to F.ounders in the early afternoon to hear Taoiseach Enda Kenny address the audience. After that I attended a round table discussion with Enda Kenny and twelve of the founders/VCs- it was interesting to hear the talk. Later we headed to the Aras and were greeted by President Mary McAleese – she spoke exceptionally well and welcomed all the founders to Ireland – it was a remarkable speech and would make you very proud of Ireland and all that we stand for. The reaction from the crowd was incredibly positive. Then we were bussed off to the Guinness Store house where Denis O’Brien spoke and hosted a dinner. Again a really positive atmosphere.
On the way up to the Gravity Bar I managed to get the attention of Martin Varsavsky of fon.com and we spent the next 30/40 minutes talking about Realex and Carapay, to get an opportunity like this is simply fantastic. Saturday was also busy, we were in Dublin Castle where Tanaiste Eamonn Gilmore spoke. I now have to follow up and email all the people I met over the F.ounders weekend, just a phenomenal experience.
Paddy Cosgrave, the organiser of F.ounders and the DWS stole the show by telling a story about Jim Fitzpatrick (who was sitting there) and presented everyone with a poster of Che Guevara (the iconic one, which was originally painted by Jim Fitzpatrick). This poster was different in that it was made from hundreds of silhouettes of Steve Jobs – just astounding!
Paddy and his team were exceptional in every aspect of the event and stunned everyone – we can all be proud of what he did for us, the internet community, Ireland and himself.
SC Mag Awards, BSides London and Bletchley Park 
The times they are a changin’