Research & Innovation

Irish venture capital fund Tribal.vc has opened a new co-location hub for high- growth start-ups, on Dublin’s South William Street.

The fund, which was founded by serial technology entrepreneurs Conor Stanley, Tadhg O’Toole and Barry Mulligan, has 70 desk spaces for start-ups. It recently signed a lease with the National Asset Management Agency (Nama) to take over a five-storey building formerly owned by builder Bernard McNamara.

“[With] the level of interest we’ve had already from start- ups we could have filled a space twice or three times the size,” Mr Stanley said. He said five companies were already based in the new space, which is called Tribal.

“They’re a mix of companies we have invested in and people we know in the start-up community,” he added.

Tenants already based in the building include Newswhip, which raised $1.1 million last year for its service for news breaking on social networks, and Likecharity, which allows people make donations to charities using mobile phones.

HealthXL, a global digital health mentor network co- founded by Martin Kelly, a venture capital partner with IBM, has also taken a desk there, as has Boxfish, which captures words in real-time as they are spoken on television.

Boxfish was co-founded by Eoin Dowling, who previously set up Red Circle Technologies, which was sold to Zamano for up to €24.4 million in December 2007.

“Boxfish’s main office is in Palo Alto [in California],” Mr Stanley said, “but it is using our office to expand in Europe. ”

Angel investors
He said Tribal.vc decided to open a co-location space in Dublin having been inspired by places such as General Assembly, which helps start-ups in New York, Berlin and Hong Kong. It is intended that the new building will provide office space for high-growth companies exiting accelerator programmes such as Wayra.

“We just want the space to wash its face,” Mr Stanley said. He said desks cost €250 a month to rent, in order to make them accessible to cash- strapped tech start-ups.

Trival.vc has funds of about €10 million raised from angel investors to back start-ups, he said.

“There are no institutional investors. It is a group of like- minded people,” Mr Stanley said. “The total pool of capital we have is about €10 million, which is relatively small, but it is an amount that can execute quickly.”

To date, Tribal.vc’s investment portfolio includes Likecharity, Cityhook and Pagefair and it plans to make three more investments in the coming months.

Mr Stanley was previously lead investor in Jolt Online Gaming, which was sold to GameStop in 2009 and he is an investor in Intercom, which closed a $23 million fundraising round in January.