Paddy’s Valley

Conor O’Neill was interviewed by Ryan Carson during the FOWA Road Trip in Dublin last Thursday and, after briefly talking about his own company, gave a great introduction to Paddy’s Valley and the Web 2.0 scene in Ireland. See below -

We heard some great itinerary suggestions during the meeting in Dublin last Thursday and more continue to come in through email. Can I remind people to check the previously published rough itinerary and then encourage you to post your ideas as comments to that, or here, for further discussion.

Damien announced the other day on Jaiku that

Facebook VP got back to me and would be delighted to give a tour to the Paddy’s Valley folks when we’re over.

Nice one Damien!

Date/time will be published when we have them but this is a real coup and should be a highlight of the week for many of us.

Earlier today Karlin Lillington left a comment here to let us now that either she or John Collins will be travelling with us on Paddy’s Valley to report on our activities.

This is absolutely wonderful news and if anyone doubted that this trip has a very serious core purpose, I think they can now rest easy.

Karlin’s comment in full:

Either John Collins or I will be covering this week with all of you for the Times, most likely me, as the Valley is my home turf and where I grew up.

I also have been approached about possibly setting up some contacts with some Valley folks of interest that I know on the blogging/social networking side. Amongst those mentioned are Dan Gillmor & Dave Winer. If this is of interest let me know. Also anyone with the most remote interest in computing will want to see the Computer History Museum in Mountain View — their collection in Visible Storage is amazing — I know the director there fairly well and can likely set up a special tour with a few extras. Also there is a separate museum, The Tech, in San Jose. It is more a hands on contextual and thematic sort of place but also interesting.

I was also suggesting you should do a group lunch at Buck’s in Woodside as, along with the old Wagon Wheel, that IS the heart of Valley deals and ideas.

If people have other interests let me know and I will see what I can do.

There will be three phases to the training to help you hone your pitch for Paddy’s Valley Week

1. Thursday 13th September before DemoBar
2. Late October
3. During the trip

Looking forward to meeting all those taking part in the first phase next week. The second phase will be much more in-depth and take at least a full day. Details to come.

Thursday will look like this:

1. Starts at 2pm on Thursday 13th September in Ely HQ on Hanover Quay Dublin
2. A panel of 4 will be present to listen and advise
3. You will have ten minutes to do a pitch followed by 20 minutes of feedback
4. There won’t be a projector/screen but they are happy for you to bring laptop or thumbdrive with demo/collateral to use. It might make most sense to speak for perhaps 2-3 minutes to give the elevator pitch and then drill into the detail sitting down using a laptop
5. Effectively they are trying to simulate the scenario in DemoBar or at Paddy’s Valley where you probably won’t get to present a deck
6. The panel have mentioned some points to consider:
   • Start the pitch by saying where the business is in its lifecycle so that the tenor of the subsequent conversation is a balanced one and nobody is overselling
   • Outline the company’s situation today
   • Business model (how is it monetised)
   • Describe the complication or problem that the industry / customer faces, that your product solves and why has it arisen?
   • What is the proposition that the company is proposing to solve the problem etc…
   • This should lead in to a discussion on how unique is the company’s proposition versus competition and how does it break down into a competitive advantage across product, pricing, distribution etc….
   • Any market validation from customers is always highly regarded by VC’s.
   • Have a fix on your finance requirements for the short to medium term
7. Nice deck on Pitching
8. And of course, Mr Kawasaki