A new European Digital City Index compiled by the Nesta foundation has ranked Dublin eighth out of 35 European cities that are considered attractive cities to establish a start-up, with London ranked No 1.
The European Digital City Index (EDCI) covers all capital cities in the 28 European Union (EU) member states (and seven other major tech hubs) as part of the European Digital Forum, an interdisciplinary research hub co-managed by Nesta and the Lisbon Council, a Brussels-based think tank.
Broken down into two rankings – start-ups and scale-ups – the compilers of the EDCI say that this reflects the fact that the demands of very young companies or individual entrepreneurs differ from the needs of high-growth firms rapidly scaling up their operations and internationalising.
And, based off their findings, Dublin has ranked eighth in both the start-ups and scale-ups categories.
However, despite its reasonable placing, the detailed findings of the ranking hide some major issues facing start-ups and scale-ups in this country.
With 10 themes – each of which is scored out of 35 – Dublin scored quite highly when it comes to some of the key factors necessary when launching a fledgling company.
Among the highest-scored themes included its ‘entrepreneurial culture’ (third out of 35), ‘mentoring and managerial assistance’ (third), ‘market’ (ninth), ‘skills’ (10th) and ‘access to capital’ (11th).
