30 Irish Start-Ups to Make Splash at #SXSW This Year: #IrelandSXSW

Representatives from 30 Irish companies unite in Austin Texas to participate in South by Southwest (SXSW), the world’s premier film, music and interactive conference.   

With the Irish delegation is Ireland’s Minister for Innovation, Mr. Sean Sherlock. The delegation is supported by Enterprise Ireland (EI), the government agency responsible for the growth and development of Irish companies in international markets. Collectively, the Irish will stage their presence at booth #1307 in Exhibit Hall 4 at the Austin Convention Center.  Enterprise Ireland is joined at SXSW this year again by IDA Ireland and the Irish Film Board.

Ireland’s web, gaming, digital media and film ingenuity will shine in myriad ways throughout the event. For Storyful which uses social networks to create an authentic and socially useful journalism, SXSW is the latest stop on its US market roll-out campaign.  This week the company named Erica Berger, who previously reported for The Economist, as head of its new Americas operation. At Storyful, she will manage relationships with publications like the New York Times and The Economist, and tech companies like Google and YouTube.  Also this week, the new Storyful Direct app landed in Apple’s App store, which helps citizens connect their content with news organizations. 

Other Irish standouts at the show include:

• Relevenz which will launch its plan-sharing social app for the Android smart phone.
• VendorShop, a provider of Facebook shopping cart solutions recently scored a seed round which it will use to expand its presence beyond the 15 countries where it’s currently entrenched.  With the VendorShop solution, merchants can promote and sell products from their Facebook page without redirecting customers to another website. 
• Volta makes its first foray to SXSW.  The provider of video-on-demand services specializes in Irish and international indie films.  The company is collaborating with its European partners on a feature that will enable users to watch and share films from their Facebook accounts.  For producers and distributors, this broadens the market for their films and facilitates social interaction with a wider audience.
• OnePageCRM is launching their Version 2.0, a simple sales management tool for small businesses.  They also boosted their global sales team by partnering with a New England-based reseller. 

•  Zartis hit a 2000 WordPress installation milestone for its user-friendly recruitment software and signed a partnership with SiliconRepublic, Ireland’s leading tech industry news site.  The company just added a feature that enables firms to launch employee referral programs with a unique social media integration flavor.

Ireland’s presence will also be felt in film.  Five Irish movies are slated for screening with several marking their North American debut at SXSW.  They include feature films “Citadel” and “Dollhouse”, and the documentary, “Dreams of a Life”.  Two short films, “Foxes” and “Joy” complete the Irish line-up.    

Take a meander over to their site to see a list of Irish companies attending SXSW.