What’s up fam I’m gonna break this in two for you thanks for visiting my blog.
Food Cloud
Our first visit of the day to Food Cloud was, like the other visits, unlike the rest. The presenter himself was indicative of the caring, entrepreneurial brand of Food Cloud. You could tell he was one of the few presenters that knew his audience and cared enough to taper to it. The combo of classroom and actually seeing the floor was extremely interesting and provided a more hands on context to what they do. As a smaller enterprise, it was easier to grasp their objectives and what they do there. It will be interesting to see the scalability of the business in the coming years and if they are able to effectively eliminate food waste and put themselves out of business.
Enterprise Ireland
What was really cool about Enterprise Ireland for me as someone in the start up space and someone who has done Pitt’s Blast Furnace, Enterprise Ireland mirrored that institution at Pitt and other start up launch pads in Pittsburgh but is a government institution. The entire organization further feeds into a theme we’ve been seeing on this trip which is the attempt to brand Ireland and help business’s be successful outside of Ireland. From what I’ve seen, their programs are fairly comparable to those in the US while Ireland does have the third largest start up funding in the world which is impressive for a small island. My last thought about Enterprise Ireland was the presenters. While they seemed very knowledgeable and are obviously successful in their jobs, they seemed to be the least aware of their audience and what we would want to hear. I feel like this can be partially attributed to it being a government organization, though the information was still informative.
Overall, it was a great day and it was interesting seeing two somewhat government influenced institutions after seeing the multinationals and start ups that we have seen.