Day 9 - Back to Dublin (Coming Home)
Our last day in Galway found us at the PorterShed, a tech accelerator housed in an old Guinness storehouse near the Galway train station. Mary greeted us and explained a bit of the history. It was inspired by a similar facility in Boulder and established after AirBnB expressed interest in Galway but determined that the city lacked the talent pool necessary and located instead in Dublin. PorterShed was conceived to never see this happen again and received funding from Enterprise Ireland to the tune of € 600,000 for the building. The remaining funding for operations comes from AIB (Allied Irish Bank), the largest bank in the area, IBM, KPMG, and Western Investment Fund. The mission is to create a shared workspace for startup tech entrepreneurs and support their growth until they can scale up and leave the nest. PorterShed and Enterprise Ireland then split an 8% stake in those companies for facilitating their quick growth. It looked very much like a WeWork space but without the glass wa
