StartUp Week Dublin

From the 21st to 25th October, a number of DCU Business School students and staff engaged with events across the city as part of the StartUpWeek Dublin initiative.

The ethos of Startup Week Dublin 2019 powered by Dublin City Council was to be a celebration of entrepreneurs, innovation and community in Dublin. In its second year, Techstars’ Startup Week™ Dublin powered by Dublin City Council brought entrepreneurs, local leaders and friends together over five days to build momentum and opportunity around our community’s unique entrepreneurial identity. In addition, supports such as one-on-one mentorship sessions provided by the Local Enterprise Office, took place daily in Dublin City Council’s Wood Quay Civic Offices.

Some of the events included:

– Techstars hosted a range of international entrepreneurs sharing their experience about the European and global marketplace.

– Enterprise Ireland held an innovation day for New Frontiers entrepreneurs and SME’s.

– StartUp Ballymun hosted a special daylong event complete with entrepreneur panels and mentoring advice on how to grow a business.

– UpStarter hosted a technology recruitment event.

– Dublin BIC hosted a funding and scaling session.

This year saw the inclusion of student and university events added to the schedule, with Dr. Roisin Lyons acting as University Track Captain on the StartUpWeek Dublin committee. “My role was to encourage third level institutes and their students to engage in the network and events, and to curate events with the student in mind. We were delighted that events ran in 5 of our 3rd level institutes across the city. We also organised a number of key events specifically for the student” (Roisin).

These included:

From Student to Startup (Monday 21st,Talent Garden Dublin). A panel event discussing how starting a company during college years has had an impact on their career to date.

Study and Startups: How to leverage both (Wednesday 23rd, Trinity Tangent Building). Five student entrepreneurs discussing how they started and the challenges/opportunities of entrepreneurship.

You too can be an entrepreneur (Thursday 24th – Solas Room, U, DCU). Series of talks and a panel session with a range of DCU students who have pursued entrepreneurship, from a range of schools in the university.

SDG Takeover (Friday 25th – Trinity Tangent Building). Workshop ran by Enactus Ireland for all 3rd level students to learn about the UN Sustainable Development goals and think of enterprises that could support them.

Linking the event to academic learning, the new Learning Innovation for Enterprise (LIFE) module for all first years in the Business School required students to attend and reflect upon one of these events as part of their entrepreneurship component of the module. Organiser of StartUpWeek Dublin, David Pollard has thanked the DCU students for their engagement and enthusiasm, noting them to be great ambassadors for the University. Norman Thompson from Dublin City Council has said that he hopes the success of this initiative paves the way for other institutes to integrate such opportunities to connect these industry and student communities.