I moved from Dublin to San Jose almost two years ago.
Apart from the many many cultural differences, I think overall "the valley" is a better place to live & work for people at this time - don't have time to go into detail, but the great weather, shear number of startups & startup events / support and community here is hard to beat, feels like everynight there is something going on relating to startups.
Also the ability to attend various meetups and hear directly from big name CTO's and lesser know but often equally smart developers offers a great learning experience.
The cost of living here is ridiculously low compared to Ireland.
When you get stressed Tahoe is only a 3 hour drive away :-)
Care to share why you're looking for a US visa? Your comment would certainly add value to the conversation (ie Why do you think the US is better for entrepreneurs than Ireland?)
I live in Ireland and am an Irish citizen (US citizen too, hoping to move to the US). There are several reasons I would think the US is better for entrepreneurs and startups than Ireland.
* The truly brilliant people tend to leave after high school, since there're no world class universities here (particularly for sciences).
* People seem, in my opinion, to get quite tunneled vision in terms of what they can achieve: they see Ireland as the boundary of their successes. People here tend to be unambitious.
* Labour laws in Ireland are very strict: once you hire someone, it's practically impossible to fire them.
* We are currently in a terrible economic situation, the country is bankrupt. 20 year old Irish companies have trouble getting credit, let alone startups.
* It's probably worth noting that Enterprise Ireland is generally considered quite incompetent in terms of deciding who to invest in and in general operation of their programs. Getting this grant would require, most likely, an absurd amount of hoop jumping.
* Dublin is also still a very expensive place to live.
That said, there're a lot of great things about Ireland (more specifically Dublin):
* It's a very small (and very social!) place, building a network is not hard, everyone knows everyone.
Very interesting thoughts. Thanks for sharing! Upvoted :-)
I wonder why would big corporations move there if labor laws are so strict there. Maybe they get "special" treatment in exchange for creating lots of jobs?
Also, if Dublin is so expensive, does it make sense to hire workers there who probably have to make more in exchange to get low corporate tax? Hmmm...
It's not as big a problem for the big companies like Google and IBM since they can afford to pay people off, they can also afford to have a more extensive hiring process in the first place.
Dublin is definitely not so expensive that it outweighs the benefit of a 12.5% corporation tax, which is more than twice less than most other EU countries.
Well I think there are way more opportunities for me in the US compared to Ireland, so that's the main reason that I would leave. But whether its better for entrepreneurs or not is a different question really, but I'll try to answer it...
Dublin's startup scene is at a much earlier stage, so there certainly isn't the same sort of community, talent, mentorship etc.
Raising money would also be more challenging, since there are only a hand full of VC's.
Sounds a little trivial, but it is worth saying that there is a really strong sense of pessimism here at the moment (because we're basically bankrupt). This is actually rather overwhelming and hard to escape from.
I also agree with the point regarding ambition. There isn't the same rampant enthusiasm here to actually build things and achieve something. So its harder to find like-minded co-founders... people who are willing to throw caution to the wind, work incredibly hard and just go for it.
Having said all those things, its undeniable that there is definitely something really positive happening in Dublin at the moment. This is the second incubator fund that's been put together (the first closed in jan of this year). Also take a look at the dublin web summit... http://www.dublinwebsummit.com/
Dogpatch has also announced that they are opening an incubator in Dublin, and DCU's incubator has just joined the Techstars network.
There are also tonnes of great hackers in Dublin, many of whom are world class. The problem is that most are comfortably tied up in their jobs at google or wherever. During the last 10 years here, the game plan was this... get a good job, leverage yourself up to the tonsils to buy a house and watch as it increased in value by 20% year on year. They buy another. People were becoming paper millionaires in their 20's, so there was no incentive to try something else. Things are different now and I think that the startup bug is going to catch pretty soon. All it takes is one reasonably successful exit and the media will be all over it. Then you'll see some great talent being shook loose.
It's not the valley, that's for sure, but for Europe I think its a great option.
