SERIES OVERVIEW
2 x 52’ documentary
Beach life, cafe society, glamorous lifestyles, fast cars and deep tans are all things associated with life overseas. With year-round sun and a world of opportunities in each place, both Dubai and Silicon Valley are attracting increasing numbers of ambitious young Irish people who want to make it big. In this series, George Lee travels to Dubai and Silicon Valley to meet with some of these Irish expats to see why they feel they’re better off abroad.
EPISODE TWO: THE IRISH IN SILICON VALLEY
Silicon Valley, California has been at the centre of a high tech, entrepreneurial gold rush over the past 50 years. The Valley, which stretches for 50 miles south of San Francisco to San Jose, is home to world leaders in innovation like Apple, Google and Facebook. An estimated 20,000 Irish live in the valley.
George travels to Silicon Valley to meet the Irish who have arrived to work for the big name companies or to entice investors to support a start-up idea that may change the world. What’s the reality behind the California Dream and how easy is it to find the next big idea? And how are the Irish enjoying a new life under the Californian sun?
GEORGE LEE “It’s not about flower power anymore, it’s silicon power. If you have an idea for a business, this is the place to come, because this is where the money is. If you’re young, if you have ambition, if you have dreams, this place is hard to resist.”
Silicon Valley’s reputation as the technology and innovation centre of the world attracts the best minds in the world – drawn by the concentration of tech companies, top universities like Stanford and Berkeley and the availability of venture capital. The valley has a total population of 3 million – one third of which were born outside the US.
DAVE BURKE is a vice president of engineering at Google Headquarters in Silicon Valley. Originally from Dublin, Dave now heads up a team of 800 Google engineers who create the software that runs a billion smart phones worldwide. Success allows Dave to indulge his other passion which is flying his Cirrus aircraft over the Golden Gate Bridge.
DAVE BURKE “It’s the ultimate toy… I smile like a child every time I see it”
MIKE MURPHY ran a mortgage brokering business in Portlaoise which closed when the recession hit in 2008. Mike, his wife Kerry and their children decided to move to San Jose because he felt that the US economy would recover first. Mike now works as a Realtor, specialising in residential property sales in the San Jose area.
MIKE MURPHY “You can achieve anything here, there’s no fear of failure. Right now, tech is good, real estate is good. Long may it last!”
SEAN AND LEONA MC ALLISTER from Derry run a business called Plotbox which uses drones to survey and map cemeteries. The McAllisters and their three children are renting in the suburbs of San Francisco where they are trying to expand their business and attract new investors.
SEÁN MC ALLISTER “ We are a start-up business and we’re giving it everything” Some days if a deal isn’t going through, your heart sinks and you ask why have I moved the whole family over here?”
GRAINNE BARRON is the founder and CEO of Viddyad a cloud based service which allows businesses create video ads online in minutes. Prior to moving, she was splitting her time between Dublin and San Francisco.
GRAINNE BARRON “Dublin is a great place to start a business, but if you want to scale the business, you have to move out here. This is where the investors are. You have to place yourself in the line of opportunity”