TD Paul Murphy sharing and supporting a clickbait headline that led to some bizarre celebrations online tells you a lot about his view of entrepreneurship and who he is as an individual.
Public representatives should be backing people who take risks, build companies and create jobs. Not piling on this ridiculously negative headline. It's clear Paul and Ruth have some sort of dislike to Bobby and co.
The Irish Times article on
@realBobbyHealy is a perfect example of how little understanding some people have of start-ups and venture backed businesses. The €50m "loss" wasn't somebody burning €50m or spending it on steak dinners. It's money invested in developing technology(both software and hardware simultaneously) while also building a business that can be investable and trying to create something new and potentially exciting that has now other competitors in the landscape such as small companies like GOOGLE AND AMAZON!
What also gets lost in all of this is that headlines actual matter and have real life and business knock-on effects and impacts . Potential investors read them. Future investors read them. Partners read them. Employees read them. A misleading headline can impact fundraising and confidence in a company long after the clicks have been counted and money earned by the Irish Times (a company who is heavily supported by the Gov).
If a journalist doesn't have an understanding of how start-ups, R&D and venture capital work, maybe they should pick up the phone and speak to the founders before publishing a negative headline. Although I suspect they fully understand and saw the headline (normally written by the editor tbf) as a great way to stir up negative attention and support from others and create even more awareness and clicks (job well done 👏😂)
Ireland needs more people willing to have an idea 🤔over a bag of chips and have a go at building it into a business. Not more people lining up to celebrate when they think someone has failed. Otherwise we will forever be depending on global tech to prop up our annual budgets... something else PM and Co have a problem with. So I'm unsure as to what they want and suspect they are too.
Bobby Healy has already built successful companies, has employed 100s of people and is trying to build something ambitious and keeping it as much in Ireland as possible. That should be encouraged and supported.