Richard Watson, managing partner of Furthr VC, has been elected chairperson of the Irish Venture Capital and Private Equity Association (IVCA), a change that matters to institute professionals as the sector's representative body changes leadership just as domestic VC investment falls for the first time since 2018. He replaces Caroline Gaynor, a partner at Lightstone Ventures, who has completed her term.

IVCA is the representative organisation for venture capital and private equity firms on the island of Ireland, whose members have invested more than €2.5 billion in Irish SMEs over the past three years. It does not publish commercial financials.

Furthr VC is a venture capital firm led by Watson with a current portfolio of 22 companies specialising in medtech and B2B software across Ireland.

Lightstone Ventures is a venture capital firm where outgoing chair Caroline Gaynor is a partner. Financial details are not publicly disclosed.

The leadership change lands amid a structural funding gap rather than a cyclical dip.

VC investment into Irish tech start-ups and SMEs totalled €1.1 billion last year but fell for the first time since 2018, with 85 per cent of funding into Irish tech SMEs coming from overseas investors in the first quarter of this year, according to RTE.

Watson said, "We have become overly reliant on overseas investors to fuel the development of our indigenous knowledge-based economy. This is particularly worrying in a world which has become increasingly isolationist while at the same time vast amounts of international venture capital are being channelled into large-scale artificial intelligence deals, particularly in the United States." He added, "We have an abundance of super tech entrepreneurs and tech start-ups in Ireland, but their potential is being constrained by a significant shortage of scale-up capital."

For the sector, a new chair prioritising domestic capital formation over international courtship marks a shift in emphasis from previous leadership terms. For the sector's funding pipeline specifically, Watson pointed to the government's proposed Personal Investment Account as one mechanism for encouraging greater domestic investment.

Whether IVCA can convert that advocacy into institutional capital commitments, rather than continued reliance on overseas funds, will define Watson's term more than any single policy proposal.

Source: RTE / TechCentral.ie / Irish Legal News