The HPSU unit of EI is very much focussed on startups and although the paperwork is a bit of a pain the money is very real.

Being export focussed in the only way to make Ireland ltd. successful as opposed to JoeBloggs ltd. successful.

Sure, proving you model locally is great if you can manage it, but for many products their may only be a handful of customers in Ireland. Taking those products international is cash intensive and may not be amenable to bootstraping.

A lot of small businesses circulating the same pool of cash is good for business, but if some of them are bringing in cash from outside thats even better. Hence the EI focus on export led business.

Joe.