Good article about French and Finnish startups in the latest edition of Futures magazine and some of the latest start-ups featured on Startupzone from Europe. The Irish invaded Silicon Valley last week too, as part of our work with Enterprise Ireland...

Happy Birthday BizSpark - one year old this week. And what a year it's been. We now have over 7,500 start-ups in the program in Europe and I believe well over 25,000 in the program worldwide. Wow. Who'd have thought a year ago that would be the case...

Not long now until the buzz of Global Entrepreneurship Week becomes a reality - the countdown is on. Thousands of events happening globally. Very exciting. You can vote for the YBI Entrepreneur of the Year too, here . My vote went to the candidate in...

I may be the anti-geek but even I am excited to see Win7 RTM made available on MSDN to BizSpark member companies. Check out the latest BizSpark news on Twitter . I finally joined the 21st century and signed up to Twitter myself a few weeks ago. Fascinating...

Last week the wonderful Diogo Vasconcelos from Cisco made me aware of the appearance of something we'd discussed while plotting over wine and carpaccio in Brussels some time ago - Fixing the Future is now live and ready to support. Perhaps that can help...

This morning we announced a new IP Ventures spinout company - InishTech - in partnership with Enterprise Ireland. The new company is being led by serial Irish entreprenerus Aidan Gallagher, John O'Sullivan and David Smyth. InishTech is a spin-off of Microsoft...

Here I am in sunny Frisco and attempting to adapt to PST. My feet barely touched the ground in the UK after my time in Eastern Europe, before I boarded a plane bound for the West Coast. Yet again I am surviving on a few hours sleep and cramming in as...

Today at our investor summit in Prague, Dan’l Lewin announced new partnerships with HSBC globally and with BT Business in the UK – who become BizSpark Network Partners. HSBC Business Banking is a very exciting partner – BizSpark will be promoted widely...

EBAN threw a great conference in Madrid: BizSpark went down well with the Business Angel networks (helping save their portfolio companies money in the early years always popular) and the networking was very worthwhile. I met some great people and we heard...

I am engrossed in The White Tiger at the moment. Awesome read. The BRIC countries are so vast and so diverse, still growing at quite a pace: India forecasting around 5.5% growth. In London last Wednesday the theme was India: the opportunity for UK...

Patience, belief, panic, loyalty, endurance, blind optimism, philosophy in the face of failure. Some of the characteristics of Ireland rugby supporters in the past decade. There was a period around RWC 2007 in Paris I wanted to change my shirt – and my...

Sometimes I describe what I do at being at the intersection of technology and politics and education. No better example of two worlds colliding than the use of Twitter during the G20 summit . There must be a real movement afoot as I cannot seem to go...

For me, the last few weeks have been delivered quite a few unexpected or unwelcome events; and a few nice surprises. The weather for one. Snow forced Heathrow (and CDG) to close down, leading to transport chaos across the UK and disruption for thousands...

My good friend Mike Sigal from Guidewire Group will host a networking session (he calls it "Cocktails") for investors, entrepreneurs and other worthy people in London 5th Feb together with NESTA and partners. Worth going along if you are in town. Good...

Want to know more about the new program for start-ups? Cliff has written a great blog on the subject. We have seen huge demand for BizSpark since launch on 6 November. Planning for launches in the Middle East and Africa is now well underway. I’m looking...

I will be speaking about BizSpark at an event in Dublin held by Microsoft Ireland if you happen to be in the area.... Ireland were one of the first countries to launch the new program on 6 November and have seen incredible demand so far. Great coverage...

November saw the launch of the eagerly awaited new program for start-ups - BizSpark is now widely available across US and Canada, Western Europe, Central & Eastern Europe, UK, Germany, France; major markets in Asia Pacific from Indonesia and Malaysia...

I consumed with relish the series of Big Cat Live on BBC last week. Thankfully was not travelling (much) and could check in almost every evening for my fix. Just when I thought the lioness was the most impressive beast, I fell for the charms of the cheetah...

Fancy finding an excuse to visit LA in a few weeks? Register for our PDC event . There is even a letter to convince your boss to let you go! Details of pre-sessions also posted on our start-up zone site .

At Microsoft we are supporting this year's European Venture Contest - with semi finals in Eindhoven, Prague, Copenhagen and Pamplona, along with a summit in Dusseldorf and finals in Barcelona in December. If you are a start-up seeking funding, you...

The one thing I manage to consume everywhere on my travels, regardless of timezone or climate, is the FT. These days it is full of desperate tales of economic decline, of course. Along with every other quality publication, every television channel and...

August in London was quite a contrast to the climate around our team meetings and conferences in San Fran and Atlanta, but despite most of Europe being on holiday it proved a good time to explore partnerships with organisations such as EBRD and IMG and...

By the way you can get this site and other great content on your desktop through one of our other partners Zebtab. Enjoy.

This week sees our Worldwide Partner Conference in Houston. I hear it's hot and humid. If you're not there in person you can see some of it online . Getting texts from the guys there. They get funnier as the night goes on. Whereas, I have just arrived...

After our Brussels summit it was time to get a bit closer to home for the BBAA conference in Brands Hatch (via Barcelona). The sun was still shining at that point. At the awards dinner the night before, I bumped into the very charismatic Richard Farleigh...