Digital Irish Podcast

GEC 25 Year Impact Report: https://www.gec.ie/impact-report   Niamh Collins has spent more than 15 years inside Ireland's startup ecosystem, and for the last three she has run the Guinness Enterprise Centre — one of Ireland's first enterprise hubs and now one of its largest, home to over 160 companies across five floors of a former Guinness hop store in the Liberties. Her vantage point is the conn...

Bernard McCaul has spent almost twenty years inside GOAL, the Irish humanitarian agency founded nearly fifty years ago when sports journalist John O'Shea came home from Kolkata and decided to act. Bernard has been on the ground for the Asian tsunami, the Haiti earthquake, and the West Africa Ebola outbreak, and he is now part of the team growing GOAL's presence in the US. That vantage poin...

Fergal Mullen left Ireland at 18 on an athletics scholarship and has spent 25 years in venture — first inside a NASDAQ-listed consultancy, then at Highland Capital Partners in Boston, before spinning out its European arm in 2012 to co-found Highland Europe. The firm now manages close to €4 billion, sees around 3,000 companies a year, and invests in seven or eight. Very few people can tell founders...

Kieran Corbett has seen the Irish startup journey from every side of the table. He started out trading futures in Dublin, began writing angel checks into early-stage Irish companies in 2015, and has kept backing them since moving to New York in 2016 — where he now invests at Studio VC, a seed-stage fund whose portfolio includes Wayflyer. That vantage point — Irish angel, US-based VC, and brother o...

Niall Dennehy's first bank account was opened in 1987, when his mother walked him ten metres from their front door to the credit union in Ballydesmond, Co. Cork — a branch named for Nora Herlihy, the local schoolteacher who helped found the Irish credit union movement. He still gets the statement every month. Nearly four decades on, having co-founded blockchain company AID:Tech and gone throug...

Dylan Scully is an early-stage investor at Frontline Ventures, a transatlantic venture fund investing in B2B tech and AI across Europe at pre-seed and seed, and in the US at Series B and beyond. Frontline’s thesis: to build a category-defining company, you need to win both Europe and the US; it’s not an either/or. In this conversation, Dylan draws on his background as a founder (Matchday) and his...

In this episode, we sit down with Elena Levine, Founder and CEO of Forcoda and the newly launched Forcoda Ventures. Elena has spent over a decade building a US-based product and engineering agency from the ground up as an immigrant founder, shipping more than 200 projects for enterprise clients including M&T Bank, Shake Shack, Oral-B, and the University at Buffalo — while also helping startup...

Digital Irish podcast celebrates Irish innovation and the Irish startup ecosystem: connecting founders, investors, and innovators across Ireland, the diaspora, and beyond. Each episode features candid conversations with VCs, entrepreneurs, and business leaders sharing the real story behind building companies: the setbacks, the playbooks, and the lessons you don't find in press releases. Whethe...

In this episode, we sit down with Stephen Tallon, a Partner at McCann FitzGerald, one of Ireland's leading law firms, where his practice focuses on emerging companies, venture capital, and M&A. Stephen trained in Ireland before spending almost a decade in London at Orrick, a global firm with deep roots in Silicon Valley, where he worked on some of the biggest deals across Europe and the US...

Marty Loughlin is back for round two. Where the first conversation was about why Irish founders think globally, this one's about what actually happens inside the room. Dave and Marty get into how DIVF makes decisions, what they do after the cheque is written, and some pretty blunt advice for any founder preparing to raise. Marty Loughlin is a partner at the Digital Irish Venture Fund (DIVF), t...

In this episode, we sit down with Marius Smyth of the Digital Irish Venture Fund (DIVF) for a follow-up to our earlier conversations with Marty Loughlin. Where Marty walked us through how DIVF picks founders and the realities of pitching the fund, Marius zooms out to the layer underneath: how DIVF is building the Irish diaspora into a working venture ecosystem rather than relying on it as a goodwi...

In this episode, we sit down with Michael O'Loughlin, Managing Partner at Argonautic Global, to get into the practical realities of Irish companies entering the US market. Michael has spent two decades working across banking, payments, regulation, central banking and venture capital — with experience spanning Ireland, Europe, the Middle East and the United States. Before his current role, he s...

Marty Loughlin from the Digital Irish Venture Fund joins Dave to unpack what makes Irish founders default to global markets from day one, why Ireland punches so far above its weight on founder output, and what the next wave of Irish startups crossing the Atlantic means for the US-Irish business ecosystem. If you're an Irish founder thinking about scaling internationally, or anyone curious about wh...

This is the second episode in Digital Irish’s Venture Capital and Fundraising Demystified series: designed to pull back the curtain on raising capital for Irish founders and give you the confidence to walk into any funding conversation knowing exactly what’s on the other side of the table. In this episode, we sit down with Jeremy Harper, Partner and Director of Investments at ERA — the Entrepreneu...

This episode is the first part of our series designed to demystify venture capital for Irish founders — pulling back the curtain on how VCs really think, what they look for, and how to build relationships with them long before you ever need to raise. In this episode, we sit down with Amy Neale, Delta Partners, one of Ireland’s most active early-stage venture capital firms. Amy works closely with a...

This podcast episode is a featured highlight from our live Digital Irish webinar. To see the full presentation, including the technical deep dives and audience Q&A, watch the video here connect.digitalirish.com In this episode, we’re cutting through the noise of AI experimentation to look at what it actually takes to get a model into production inside a global enterprise. We’re joined by Conor...

How are leading founders actually using AI day to day? In this episode of the Digital Irish Podcast , we’re sharing highlights from the first session in our Practical Artificial Intelligence series — focused on real, hands-on experiences with AI from people building and using it right now. Our guest is Sean Blanchfield — Irish entrepreneur behind Demonware and Phorest , and founder of his latest v...

In this episode, we sit down with Michael Kelly, a true digital pioneer and veteran of the media and AdTech landscape. For more than two decades, he has been at the front edge of every major wave in media, marketing, and technology, building, scaling, and transforming high-growth companies across the U.S., UK, and Ireland, including giants like AOL, Time Warner, and The Weather Company. As co-foun...

This special episode takes you behind the scenes of Irish Tech Week — from the 17 Irish startups who flew into New York to a sold-out conference day at Civic Hall — and brings you conversations with the founders, supporters, and partners behind it. As a bonus, we introduce a new recurring segment to help you stay plugged into what’s happening across the wider Irish startup ecosystem. Featured Gues...

The Morrison Legacy Foundation: https://morrisonlegacy.com/   In this episode, we uncover the remarkable story behind the Bruce Morrison Legacy Initiative, a project honoring the groundbreaking visa program that gave tens of thousands of Irish immigrants the chance to build new lives in America. Our guest, Elaine Brennan, shares how the initiative began, why preserving these immigration stories ma...

The Morrison Legacy Foundation: https://morrisonlegacy.com/   In this episode of the Digital Irish Podcast, we explore how curiosity, experimentation, and a single bold decision can shape an entire life and career. Feargal O'Sullivan — founder and CEO of USAM Group Inc ., and a Morrison Visa recipient — shares his remarkable journey, from arriving in New York with no money and few plans to bec...

In this episode of The Digital Irish Podcast, we sit down with Alan Crabbe, founder of FrontCover.io, a cutting-edge fintech solution transforming digital memberships in the entertainment industry. Alan shares the inspiring story behind FrontCover.io, born from his experience with crowdfunding for live music in Melbourne. He discusses the platform's unique features, its value proposition for venue...

In this episode of The Digital Irish Podcast, we sit down with Alan Costello, one of the earliest employees at Afterpay, to uncover the inside story of its incredible journey from a small startup to a publicly listed, multinational business. Alan shares his firsthand experiences navigating the highs and lows of startup life, the challenges of rapid scaling, and the near-shutdown during the COVID-1...

In this episode of The Digital Irish Podcast , we explore the growing global reach of Irish innovation, with a special focus on Australia as a key hub for Irish businesses and professionals. Digital Irish Australia is a chapter dedicated to fostering collaboration between the two nations, and in this episode, we sit down with Kian Jackson and Stephen Mullen, the dynamic leaders behind this initiat...

This week we chat with John Hill, VP of Story at Whop (whop.com), about building community and driving impact at scale. We explore his journey from LinkedIn and Techstars to Whop, and the personal influences behind his drive. Key Discussion Points: Whop's Mission & Impact: John shares his excitement about Whop's mission to enable sustainable income and discusses the company's rapid...