Last night I braved the rainy streets and puddles of the Strand to make my way to the London School of Economics’ Clement House Building on Aldwych for the March Irish Themed London Enterprise Tech Meetup.

I knew about the Tech Meetups and their good reputation of supporting tech start-ups from across the globe, but had never been to one. Having been involved in the Surrey 100 Club run by The University of Surrey and The Surrey Research Park, I was very keen to go along to last night’s Meetup, especially as an one of our Irish based clients had been invited to present their solution to the 50+ members attending. Admittedly, I was also very impressed and intrigued that it was going ahead at all being the day after St Patrick’s day, and on what I learnt was actually a Public Holiday in Ireland!

So the four Irish based tech businesses companies presenting on the night (put forward by the UK team from Enterprise Ireland) were all very varied, but all utilised software in some way and most relied on cloud capabilities. This drew in a real mix of people with ranging interests and experiences, some of whom no doubt looking to network with like-minded technologists and entrepreneurs, others to learn about new ideas coming from across the Irish Sea, plus of course the odd smattering of analyst/influencers and Investors looking to unearth the next big thing!

And perhaps they did – the next ‘big thing’ in software solutions might just come out of Ireland. Gavin McWhirter, UK Country Manager at Enterprise Ireland (@mcwhirter), cited in his intro session that according to the latest Economist Intelligence Unit Global Index, Ireland is actually the 2nd largest exporter of software in the world. In my opinion, that is certainly worth raising a pint of the black stuff to… or, as we did last night, a German Pilsner post event in the Bierkeller over the road from the LSE!