Sowing The Seeds Of Prosperity.

(From Business and Finance)

Start-ups are the seeds of long-term prosperity. Somehow, despite funding problems, Ireland has sown a bountiful field in the midst of a long drought.

Matthew Clark reports.

Some five years after it was incorporated as a company in Trinity College, Dublin, a promising Irish start-up had upped its headcount to 100, moved into city centre offices, and set the wheels in motion for IPOs in Dublin and the US. Although it is poised for achievement, perhaps the most amazing aspect of the story is that this spin-off was born out of a university system which experts concluded was starved of the R&D funding essential to building a knowledge- based economy.

The company in question is Iona Technologies and the year is 1997, when the firm launched the fifth- largest IPO …