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IT WAS HALLOWEEN 2013, and Elon Musk was back in Ireland for the first time since he was seven years old because he was promised a party. The CEO of Tesla and Space X, which were already worth over a billion dollars each, smiled nervously from the stage of Web Summit that day while confessing that the real reason he travelled 5,000 miles was for a rager.
‘I understand there’s going to be a great party tonight,’ he told the crowd when asked how he found the time to travel to a small island in Europe for a tech conference. While he was a few years away from being crowned the world’s richest man and becoming the controversial celebrity figure he is today, Musk was, even then, the most high-profile guest to grace the Web Summit stage.
Wearing a jacket with fabric sleeves and black leather on the vest, he was fresh faced and subdued, a far cry from the anti ‘woke’ crusader, ‘free speech absolutist’, Twitter owner that he has become today. But even back then the confidence he exuded was palpable as he sat, still, at the very edge of his armchair, leaning forward for nearly the entire 40-minute interview, and gesturing with steepled fingers like a politician or a cartoon villain.
Along with getting a boost from Musk’s presence, that year was a milestone for the Web Summit because it had more than doubled its attendees, going from 4,000 in 2012 to over 10,000 in 2013. Musk was an ideal guest for the time because, while slightly niche to the general public, he had a rock star quality for tech bros and aspiring digital entrepreneurs. ‘It gave a very real legitimacy to the whole event,’ one ex-staffer recalled.
Like if anything’s good enough for Elon Musk, it’s good enough for hardcore entrepreneurs which meant that we could start leveraging his name to get more interesting entrepreneurs there.
For many in the tech industry, 2013 was the year that put Web Summit, as a company and a concept, on the map. The audience was also full of its fair share of tech celebrities, including Patrick Collison, co-founder of Stripe, who sat up front for the interview and was said to have been rapt with the discussion. For some of those in attendance, that year’s event was the first time that Dublin was establishing itself as a destination for tech, investment, digital innovation and enterprise. It made people want to work for the company.
‘I got to see a lot of people I would have idolised in tech at the time, it felt cool, like being in a little club,’ one individual said. It may have been surprising that Musk found time to travel to Dublin, but to the man sitting directly beside him, it was an unbelievable sales opportunity. Grinning from ear to ear, Enda Kenny, then Taoiseach and leader of Fine Gael, could hardly contain the excitement he felt at being in proximity to such a rich and powerful businessman.
Wearing a microphone headset and appearing later from a cloudy mist of dry ice, Kenny was doing his best to look the part of a cool prime minister. Earlier, he had been driven into the RDS in a Tesla with Musk behind the wheel to the sound of the James Bond theme tune. Over the course of their 30 minutes onstage, Kenny would pitch Musk on all the possibilities that Ireland held for him, such as a young and educated workforce.
The unspoken reason was the country’s low rate of corporation tax, which was a factor that had enticed an increasing number of tech behemoths like Google, Facebook and LinkedIn to Irish shores. At some points, the conversation became such a shameless plug for Irish industry and enterprise that the crowd laughed at Kenny’s wink-and-finger-point diplomacy.
‘Henry Ford started off his motoring business in Cork, at the turn of the last century, and it was here for 60 years,’ Kenny said, turning to face Musk directly. ‘So if you’re looking for a good base, we’ll certainly give you an opportunity. Seriously, I’ve been saying this to you, if you’re going to come to Europe, with Tesla, we will compete with the best, so if you want to do that, you give us a chance, we’ll give you a fair hearing and our workers will not you down, believe you me,’ he added.
Kenny’s decision to focus on Ireland’s potential as a manufacturing hub was a relief to some of those in attendance who recall him describing how Irish rain was good for a person’s complexion only the evening before. Also onstage was Shervin Pishevar, one of the biggest players in the VC world, with the Uber deal one of biggest successes of his career. Around four years later, in 2017, he would go on to be accused by multiple women of sexual harassment and assault. He has denied the claims and maintained they were part of a ‘smear campaign’.
But at that year’s Web Summit, he was flying high, holding an afterparty in his room in the Shelbourne Hotel, and according to Emily Chang’s Brotopia, ended up alone with one woman on a couch there. ‘Pishevar, she said, was holding a phone – it’s unclear who it belonged to – and was smiling as he was showing her photos of genitalia of women they claimed to have slept with,’ Chang reported in the 2018 book. Onstage during the interview earlier that day, Kenny leans over with one hand cupped behind his ear when the billionaire is asked what he would do if he was Taoiseach. Musk replies by comparing early and medium-stage companies to ‘a little sapling growing in a redwood forest’.
With Kenny nodding beside him in agreement, Musk speaks in a small voice while explaining his theory. ‘You’ve got giant companies and if you don’t get a little bit of sunlight and nutrition, it’s game over,’ he says. While Musk would not go on to open a company in Ireland, the possibility that he might even consider it was thrilling in the context of where Ireland was positioned globally at the time.
Catherine Sanz is a journalist living in Dublin and the legal correspondent with the Business Post. She has previously held roles at The Times, The Sunday Times, ABC News, and Storyful. Her work has won awards in Ireland and the US. Her new book, Drama Drives Interest is out now.
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The next general election will be tough too Joan…
They are not helping people get back to work.the only reason the number signing on is lower is because of emigration.i had to leave the country to find work leaving my wife and kids behind.thats one of the hardest things I have ever done or will do.those idiots in the dail sacrifice nothing.we the people take all the hits.
Too true.
“She said the level of social welfare abuse “is relatively low” but that in a budget of €20 billion, even 3 per cent of people abusing it amounts to millions of euro.”
Last week World Bank figures on remittances showed tha Nigerians in Ireland sent back 490 million euros to Nigeria – that’s 26,000 euros for each Nigerian man, woman and child in the State.
However, children are ineligible to work, so the figure is close to 40,000 euros.
But wait, Nigerians also have the highest rate of unemployment in the country than any other group – 45% (Lithuanians are second at 25%) – so the actual figure is more than 55,000 euros sent to Nigeria each year.
Most Nigerians are working in unskilled, low-paid jobs.
Monies sent from Ireland by foreign migrants are three times higher than the amount of money being sent home to Ireland by the Irish abroad.
World Bank statistics show that Irish people living in other countries sent more than $750 million (€560 million) back home in 2011, but foreign workers here sent remittances of $2.4 billion (€1.8 billion) home in the same year.
Wake up, Joan.
Quickly.
I think we’d all have a different outlook to these budgets if those writing them up took a significant pay cut and led by example. I’m talking knocking 80k a year off their wage slips.
Poor Joan, she hasn’t got a clue who is even writing the budget coz it sure isn’t noonan. Wonder if the furer over in Germany is telling her to give all these “exclusive” interviews with the journal?
Why oh why are you giving her airtime. Her village is missing her…..
Labour must finally be looking at the polls. Local elections coming up so they send out Joan the Moan to spew out her usual drivel.
Hell, if you throw enough mud at the wall some of it will stick, or as we’ve witnessed over the past couple of days, if Joan starts commenting on everything, then maybe we’ll actually believe some of this tripe.
At the last General Election I was foolish enough to believe your ‘bile’ & actually gave Joan my first preference vote, a mistake I can gladly say will never happen again. As soon as Labour got into bed with their counterparts in Government, they turned their backs on the very people who voted them in.
In saying that you have done one good thing whilst in power & I thank you for it.
Thank you Joan for showing me the error of my ways. Roll on 2016!!!
What a lot of hot air
Things won’t be tough in her house. An overpaid ministerial salary will make sure of that.
Tough experience Joan? Possibly you should try living as those who your decisions effect for a couple of months. Tough experience my arse. Silly minister.
The rich and wealthy won’t feel the pain, you can count on that!
“Hard decisions and trying to be fair’. .. Roll on the next elections .
.
Ah Aoife my morning was going so well until about 2min ago when I read the headline and then saw the sour frown on Burton.
Let them know how you’s all feel when the next election comes around
Clueless woman.
She is my third favourite Burton.
whats she moaning about sure the lads over in the european comission look after that for them now every body knows that , all you have to do joan is pretend that you have read it when they send it to you and your miserable party … lets be serious she’s not going to feck up her chances of jumping on the Mep gravy train to brussells by disagreeing with next years round of taxing the poor.. VOTE SF
Labour no answers, no solutions, a spent force thats passed it best before date.
Exactly! Hopefully they’ll go the same way the Greens did last time round
Bullshit they have…
She and her colleagues don’t know what tough means – muppets, all of them!
Not a tough experience for you, Joan, insulated as you are from a falling income (or no income) and constantly mounting taxes, levies and “charges”. The tough experience is for the generality of the population and you needn’t try and fool us into thinking you are agonizing over any of the “tough decisions”. How dare you? Your Government have had, admittedly little room for manoevre, but have consistently made the choices which would punish and disadvantage the ordinary working population – and the ‘vulnerable’ about whom you were so vocal in the general election campaign. If you think people are going to overlook that, you have another think coming.
All benefits should be slashed by 50%
Unless you have worked to pay into it
Personally if your long term unemployed 5 yrs or more you should be on side road cleaning in parks working cleaning beach
You should not get benefit for nothing
must be local elections coming up Joan THE MOAN, sure you dont have to worry about money, but dont forget the people dont forget the punishment labour imposed on its voters LIARS
some neck
have your say