Virtual tractors inspire Irish web show

Irish geeks' appetite for networking is healthy, judging fromattendance at Dublin Web Summit

It was standing room only at the Dublin Web Summit, asentrepreneurs and investors flirted with each other like it was 1999again. The third web summit event in less than a year organised byserial web entrepreneur Paddy Cosgrave, it appears the Irish techcommunity's appetite for networking is far from sated.

Kicking off with a burgers and beers BBQ lunch, it was a half-day for geeks to leave the safe confines of coding to mix and minglein full 3D.

The speaker line-up was a cocktail of lessons, from those who arealready making their tech millions, like online gaming company Zyngaand display advertising newbie Struq, to elevator pitches from Irishstart-ups tipped to be the next big thing.

Marcus Segal, chief operating officer of Zynga, the US socialgaming company behind the CityVille and FarmVille games, was a stardraw. An unknown four years ago, the company is now the world'slargest social game developer, with more than 250 million monthlyplayers.

Originally made popular through Facebook but now, keen to avoidbeing a mere parasite on Mark Zuckerberg's behemoth, Zynga isdeveloping games for iPhone and Android devices, and is reported bein talks with Goldman Sachs to lead its initial public offering.

Arriving in Dublin the night before the summit, Segal heard fromthe group's San Francisco headquarters that the company's latestgame Empires and Allies, launched just a week earlier, had crossedthe five million players daily mark. "Not bad for a week's work,"quipped Segal, before speaking at the event.

Summit attendees who wake in the dead of night with doubts thattheir business idea may actually be batty can look to Zynga forcomfort. The company's games, free to play, earn their keep byflogging "virtual" goods. With 44 million "farmers" playing itsFarmVille game alone, the company sells gamers virtual animals,tractors and crops for their cyber farmyards.

So people are buying stuff from Zynga that doesn't exist? At hiscompany's new Dublin office and with his tongue slightly in cheek,Segal says: "You can ask 'is it real?' but a real tractor is not 60or 80 cents. [With Farmville] I can have the experience of owning atractor and driving it around my farm without any of the headaches.I don't have to keep it clean, I don't have to put fuel in it andyet I can have this experience with my tractor - and it's really ajoy, a great escape."

Entrepreneurs wearied by investor derision will be buoyed byZynga's ability to make millions from selling invisible tractors,but the trajectory of online advertising entrepreneur Sam Barnett isbound to inspire envy.

Founded in 2008, Struq's success in personalising online bannerads has already landed Barnett on the Sunday Times Rich List. With apersonal fortune of pound(s)40 million ([euro]45.6 million), heturned 28 the day before the web summit.

Addressing the summit, Barnett said his was the story of anunderdog. Working in advertising, he figured the effectiveness ofonline display advertising could be vastly improved if each browsersaw an ad unique to them.

With clients including EasyJet, Barnett explains the airline usesStruq code on its site to capture browser data such as the length oftime spent on the site, the time of visit and what they browsed tobuild a profile of who is most likely to be profitable.

"If a browser leaves the site without purchasing, the code willtrack them to their next site and serve them a personalised ad.

"In 2008, the venture capital market dropped to a 12-year low andthe ad industry crashed; I couldn't get a loan," Barnett recalled.

In 2009, he had a product that could "predict which browserscould be profitable to a company to an accuracy of 95 per cent . . .but the company was broke, we couldn't even afford an internetconnection."

It was only because his landlord, facing jail, stopped collectingrent that he could afford to keep the lights on. The company'sproduct now yields clients pound(s)19 in revenue for every pound(s)1spent and Struq's success has made Barnett one of Britain's richestmen under 30.

With the company's three-year growth chart resembling a hockeystick, Barnett's message to Dublin's tech entrepreneurs was to"embrace your underdog spirit".

Home-grown talent came in the form of three-minute pitches fromfour of the participants in Enterprise Ireland's Internet GrowthAcceleration Programme (iGap).

iGap aims to help high potential internet companies put togetheraggressive international growth plans and the event heard fromalumni Phorest, a company that manages online reservations for thehair and beauty sector; Tunepresto, which creates original rights-free music for slideshows and video; WhatClinic, which helps peopleto locate a health clinic; and interactive language companyRendezVu.

With the tech news pages in the late 1990s awash with Irish e-learning companies such as Riverdeep, PrimeLearning and NETg,RendezVu co-founder Paul Groarke says he's hopeful his company canrevive the sector here.

RendezVu's virtual language tutor delivers an oral exam,correcting students on grammar and pronunciation. With 250 millionstudents trying to learn English in China, Groarke says hissubscription-based product allows them to build confidence. "Itturns out most of those learners are too scared to speak to a human;they actually prefer talking to our avatar so it bridges the gap."

The voice-activated remote control of Irish tech start-up Amuletalso attracted interest at the event. Designed for use with WindowsMedia Centre-powered TVs, company chief technology officer EddyCarroll says Amulet's aim is to get its technology inside all set-top boxes.

"If I speak a command like 'search for Coronation Street', itwill show all the episodes of Coronation Street over the nextseveral days," said Carroll demonstrating the product to a steadystream of visitors.

With a fourth Dublin Web Summit planned for October, organisersbetter hope techies don't get their hands on this or they may neverleave the house.