# Top 40 Social Media Startup Investors in Ireland in May 2026

## Act Venture Capital
- Type: VC Fund
- Location: Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
- Relevant deals: 7
- Stages: Seed, Series A
- Focus: Software, Information Technology, Analytics

Technology-focused, investing capital and expertise to fuel growth in the most promising ideas and companies. Raised c.€600m across multiple funds and invest from seed to growth.We look for companies with potentially cutting-edge, category-defining businesses in markets including application software, IT infrastructure, communications, Internetand mobile. We help founders create and scale businesses globally. We work as a small team with diverse strengths accessing a community of over 200 founders. The teams and companies we back scale their investor base as they scale their business execution and ambition. We work closely with them in this process. Over the past 25 years have built a broad network of US and European investors and founders that share our vision and approach.Act is based in Dublin, Ireland.Our most recent funds are supported by the European Investment Fund.

## AIB Seed Capital Fund
- Type: VC Fund
- Location: Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
- Relevant deals: 4
- Stages: Seed, Series A
- Focus: Software, Health Care, Medical

The AIB Seed Capital Fund was established in 2007 to provide venture capital for companies at the seed and early stages of development across a range of sectors throughout the Republic of Ireland. The Fund was established under the Enterprise Ireland Seed and Venture Capital Programme 2007-2012.The Fund has a total of €30m under managementwith AIB and Enterprise Ireland both committing €15m. It is managed by experienced managers with extensive expertise in making seed and early stage investments, adding value and facilitating business success.The Fund managers are empowered to make seed investments of up to approximately €500,000. Furthermore, the Fund has the capacity to make investments in later rounds to support the continued growth of investee companies.The Fund will be managed by Enterprise Equity Venture Capital and the Dublin Business Innovation Centre. This unique partnership brings together extensive regional and investment expertise.Enterprise Equity will evaluate and manage all investments outside the city and county of Dublin, as well as investments that require in excess of €250,000 from the fund within the city and county of Dublin.Dublin Business Innovation Centre (DBIC) will evaluate and manage all investments within the city and county of Dublin when the initial investment amount required from the Fund does not exceed €250,000.

## Shane Naughton
- Type: Angel
- Location: New York, New York, United States
- Relevant deals: 3
- Stages: Seed, Angel
- Focus: Software, SaaS, Apps

Shane Naughton - Founding Partner and Board of Directors @ On The Stage

## Enterprise Ireland
- Type: VC Fund
- Location: Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
- Relevant deals: 3
- Stages: Seed, Series A
- Focus: Software, Health Care, Information Technology

Enterprise Ireland is the government agency responsible for the development and funding of the indigenous business sector. Their mission is to accelerate the development of companies to achieve strong positions in global markets resulting in increased national and regional prosperity.
It was founded in 1998 and headquartered in Dublin, Ireland.

## Hal Philipp
- Type: Angel
- Location: Zürich, Zurich, Switzerland
- Relevant deals: 2
- Stages: Seed, Angel
- Focus: News, SaaS, Big Data

Hal Philipp - Principal Partner @ Meridian Growth Capital

## Tribal.vc
- Type: VC Fund
- Location: Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
- Relevant deals: 2
- Stages: Seed, Series A
- Focus: Software, SaaS, Analytics

We are a venture firm that empowers entrepreneurs on their own unique path to success. We invest early and with conviction, using our experience and networks to help guide founders and their teams as needed. 

Our investment experience includes;  

Seed investment in Boxever, acquired by SiteCore.

## Tom Kennedy
- Type: Angel
- Relevant deals: 2
- Stages: Seed, Series A
- Focus: Travel, Video, Retail

Tom has a proven track record as an entrepreneur and in building a global e-commerce business from Dublin as a co-founder of www.hostelworld.com (Web Reservations International). Tom achieved a successful exit from Hostelworld.com in 1999, generating $500m in shareholder value. He previously owned Avalon House hostel in Dublin. When he’s notworking, Tom enjoys the gastronomic delights of life and the views of the Wicklow mountains from the saddle of his bicycle.

## Peter O'Grady Walshe
- Type: Angel
- Location: Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
- Relevant deals: 2
- Stages: Seed
- Focus: Video, Publishing, Social Media

Peter O'Grady Walshe - Chairman @ VideoElephant

## The Associated Press
- Type: VC Fund
- Location: New York, New York, United States
- Relevant deals: 2
- Stages: Series A, Seed
- Focus: SaaS, Video, News

Build your next story with up-to-the-minute breaking news and history's most iconic images and video directly from The Associated Press. Where stories begin.

## Meridian Growth Capital
- Type: VC Fund
- Location: Southampton, Southampton, United Kingdom
- Relevant deals: 2
- Stages: Seed, Series A
- Focus: Software, Insurance, Digital Media

Investing in entrepreneurial businesses and backing management teams since 2009.

## Social Starts
- Type: VC Fund
- Location: San Francisco, California, United States
- Relevant deals: 2
- Stages: Seed, Series A
- Focus: Software, Health Care, Artificial Intelligence

Social Starts is a $60M+ venture capital partnership with a uniquely data-driven approach to investing in moment-of-inception and Series A financing rounds.

## SparkLabs Global Ventures
- Type: VC Fund
- Location: Palo Alto, California, United States
- Relevant deals: 2
- Stages: Seed, Series A
- Focus: Software, Internet, Information Technology

SparkLabs Global Ventures is a venture capital firm that offers seed-stage investment services to firms in the SaaS, healthcare, education, IoT, fintech, mobile, commerce, HR, gaming, security, and VR industries. It was founded in Dec 2013 and is based in California.Exceptional entrepreneurs, that are building strong, category defining companiesat highly advantageous valuations – can be found anywhere. The company has a team that is highly experienced in finding such talent and helping our entrepreneurs to develop, grow, network, and scale into other markets throughout the world.

## NDRC
- Type: VC Fund
- Location: Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
- Relevant deals: 2
- Stages: Seed, Pre-Seed, Convertible Note
- Focus: Software, Information Technology, E-Commerce

NDRC builds high-impact new ventures. By providing the people, time, space and investment needed at the earliest stages of dedicated commercialisation work, NDRC is creating companies worthy of commercial investment and with the ability to scale. The NDRC team has the breadth of knowledge and expertise in technology and markets. NDRC worksside-by-side with researchers, entrepreneurs and venture teams to turn great ideas into successful new ventures.By the end of 2014, NDRC’s portfolio of startup ventures had secured a cumulative €88m in follow-on investment from commercial investors, with a combined market capitalisation of approx. €220m.

## Dublin Business Innovation Centre
- Type: VC Fund
- Location: Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
- Relevant deals: 2
- Stages: Series A, Seed
- Focus: Software, Web Development, Analytics

Furthr provides long-term support to startups and SME businesses in Ireland. We support Irish entrepreneurs who excel in innovation and international trading.

## John Corcoran
- Type: Angel
- Location: Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
- Relevant deals: 1
- Stages: Series A
- Focus: Video, Publishing, Social Media

Dublin-based John Corcoran (89) co-founded the hugely successful Paddy Power chain of bookmakers in 1988 along with David Power and Stewart Kenny. At a time when big brands were taking over the market, the three men joined their three independent chains to become a force to be reckoned with. Corcoran remains a shareholder in Paddy Power Betfair,although he has sold off tranches for 'estate planning' purposes in recent years. John died in June 2019.

## Ray Nolan
- Type: Angel
- Relevant deals: 1
- Stages: Seed, Angel, Pre-Seed
- Focus: Apps, News, Software

Ray Nolan - Non-Exec Chair @ XSellco

## Jim Mullins
- Type: Angel
- Relevant deals: 1
- Focus: News, SaaS, Big Data

Jim Mullins

## Kumar Malavalli
- Type: Angel
- Location: San Francisco, California, United States
- Relevant deals: 1
- Stages: Seed, Angel, Series A
- Focus: Software, Enterprise Software, Internet

Kumar Malavalli is the co-author and driving force behind Fibre Channel, an evolutionary technology that enabled the development of production-class storage area networks (SAN's). Co-founder and former CTO of Brocade Communications; Currently Co-founder, Chairman and CEO of InMage Systems.In February 2003, Kumar was inducted into theSilicon Valley Engineering Council Hall of Fame for his contributions to technology. He also received the Gene Milligan Award for Effective Committee Management from the International Committee for Information Technology Standards (INCITS) for chairing an INCITS committee that developed 17 standards in the area of Storage Area Networks. In 2012 the Computer History Museum published his work on Fibre Channel standards in the T11 Accredited Standards Committee.Kumar's philanthropy in the field of education extends from digital learning centers in rural India to American institutions of higher education. He has established the Kumar Malavalli Endowed Chair in Storage Systems Research at University of California Santa Cruz, co-founded the Indus Scholastic Management Services and serves as a trustee of the Indus International Schools.He currently invests in and mentors numerous startups in US, Canada and India, served as a member of the Board of Directors of The Indus Entrepreneurs Silicon Valley Chapter (TiE), and is a trustee of the American India Foundation (AIF). In 2012, Kumar became a trustee of the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco.

## Colin Wiel
- Type: Angel
- Location: San Francisco, California, United States
- Relevant deals: 1
- Stages: Seed, Series A
- Focus: iOS, Communities, Location Based Services

An engineer, AI patent-holder, and serial entrepreneur, Wiel began his career at Boeing, where he designed algorithms to improve automatic control systems on airplanes. After running a java programming consultancy that built early e-commerce systems like Charles Schwab’s online trading website, Wiel partnered with Brien to launch Waypoint Homes in2009. Wiel led the tech, M&A, and fundraising teams at Waypoint all the way to the NYSE, where Starwood Waypoint Residential Trust (SWAY) debuted its IPO in 2014.In 2016 Brien and Wiel partnered again to create Mynd, a property management and real estate investing firm with 8,000+ SFR units under management across 25 US markets. Last valued at $807M by Silicon Valley venture capitalists in 2021, they’re going long again on Mynd and leaving it all out on the field.

## Matthew Le Merle
- Type: Angel
- Location: San Francisco, California, United States
- Relevant deals: 1
- Stages: Seed, Series A
- Focus: iOS, Apps, Local

Matthew Le Merle is a Managing Partner of Keiretsu Capital and Fifth Era (www.fifthera.com). Matthew was formerly the Co-President of Keiretsu Forum in San Francisco and is an expert on digitization having advised leading technology companies including eBay, Google, HP, Microsoft and PayPal on how to drive and benefit from emerging digital valuepropositions.

## Per Brilioth
- Type: Angel
- Location: Stockholm, Stockholms Lan, Sweden
- Relevant deals: 1
- Stages: Series B, Seed
- Focus: Apps, Software, Transportation

Per Brilioth - CEO @ VNV Global

## Angus McMillian
- Type: Angel
- Relevant deals: 1
- Focus: News, SaaS, Big Data

Angus McMillian

## Tony Smurfit
- Type: Angel
- Relevant deals: 1
- Stages: Seed, Series A
- Focus: Video, Privacy, Software

Tony Smurfit is the Founder & CEO of Smurfit Kappa.

## Armando Biondi
- Type: Angel
- Location: San Francisco, California, United States
- Relevant deals: 1
- Stages: Seed
- Focus: SaaS, Software, Big Data

Armando Biondi currently works as the Co-Founder and CEO for Breadcrumbs.io. He previously worked at Hootsuite as the global head of growth operations.

## Julien Nguyen
- Type: Angel
- Location: San Francisco Bay Area, California, United States
- Relevant deals: 1
- Stages: Seed, Series A
- Focus: Internet, Social Media, Music

Julien Nguyen has 30 years of operational, entrepreneurial and early stage investment experience.Prior to NanoDimension, Julien was a Managing Director at Applied Materials Ventures and Concept Ventures. Julien led investments in companies such as Infinera (Nasdaq: INFN), M-Stream (acq’d by Broadcom), Devicescape, Grandis (acq’d by Samsung),Takumi (acq’d by Sagantec), Envis (acq’d by Magma), with co-investors including August Capital, Benchmark, Kleiner Perkins, Matrix Partners, Sevin Rosen, Sigma Partners. Prior to his venture capital activities, Julien founded or was part of the founding team for four startups: Ezlogin (acquired by 724 Solutions), Novita Communications (acquired by Planetweb), E-Motions (acquired by Sigma Designs), Radius (IPO). He holds 21 patents issued in the US.Julien received his postgraduate degree from Telecom Paris (France) and his Master of Science from Ecole Polytechnique (France).

## Eamon Leonard
- Type: Angel
- Relevant deals: 1
- Stages: Seed, Angel, Series A
- Focus: Messaging, Software, Apps

Eamon is a veteran of 20 years developing and building products, leading teams, and creating communities.Over the years he has: built and sold a company, built and failed to sell a company, made angel investments, hosted numerous conferences, organised hundreds of meetups, and brought thousands of people together to collaborate and do goodthings.As of June 2019, he's working on Boundless: making it easy for businesses to employ people in other countries and be compliant with tax and employment law.

## IT-Farm
- Type: VC Fund
- Location: Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan
- Relevant deals: 1
- Stages: Seed, Series A
- Focus: Software, Health Care, Information Technology

IT-Farm is a venture capital firm which specializes in seed, start-up, and early stage companies. It primarily invests in mobile, big-data, connected car, IoT, OTT service, Helth care, Bio Tech and other IT industries. The firm actively invests in SF bay area and Japan, as well as other geometries including Asia and Europe. We support portfoliocompanies, especially on the partnership with Japanese enterprises.

## Barry Lunn
- Type: Angel
- Relevant deals: 1
- Stages: Seed, Angel
- Focus: Sensor, Software, Aerospace

Barry Lunn, the founder and CEO of Provizio (previously founder and CEO of Arralis) takes a design led approach to tech entrepreneurship. Barry’s approach to solving difficult technology problems is as much artistic as it is actual physics.

## Flight Ventures
- Type: VC Fund
- Location: San Francisco, California, United States
- Relevant deals: 1
- Stages: Seed, Series A, Series B
- Focus: Software, SaaS, Mobile

Flight Ventures is the first fund that was built by leveraging AngelList syndicates. They operate some of the top syndicates on AngelList, as well as the Flight Ventures Expansion fund (offline). Flight Ventures includes 25 partners with exceptional operational and entrepreneurial accolades, all whom actively engage with our portfolio companies.

## Paddy Bolger
- Type: Angel
- Location: Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
- Relevant deals: 1
- Stages: Seed
- Focus: Video, Publishing, Social Media

Paddy Bolger - Chief Financial Officer @ CWSI

## Jon Staenberg
- Type: Angel
- Location: Seattle, Washington, United States
- Relevant deals: 1
- Stages: Seed, Series A, Series B
- Focus: Information Technology, Software, Internet

Jon Staenberg has been working with venture backed companies for more than a decade, and has participated in over 100 deals. In this capacity he has started his own company, worked full-time in other companies, and consulted to over 50 startups. He is one of the most experienced venture capitalists in the Pacific Northwest, having raised two fundstotaling over $100 million. After working in the marketing area at Microsoft for six years, he joined Virtual i-O as VP of Sales & Marketing. During the last eight years, he has been engaged in business planning, business development, financial planning and fundraising, recruiting and mergers and acquisitions work for a variety of Silicon Valley and Seattle-based startups.Jon serves on the boards of Class.com and Micropath, and is on the advisory boards of New Vine Logistics, Vista Broadband, Prime Advantage, Time Domain, Atlantes.com, OneName, Syncronex, and uReach.com.Jon graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford University, where he received his B.S., M.A., and M.B.A. While at Stanford, he started and ran two successful companies.Jon grew up in Omaha, Nebraska and is a hardcore Nebraska Cornhusker fan. In his spare time he collects sports ticket stubs.

## Prabhu Goel
- Type: Angel
- Location: San Francisco, California, United States
- Relevant deals: 1
- Stages: Series C, Seed, Angel
- Focus: Software, Enterprise Software, Information Technology

Prabhu began his career by joining IBM’s EDA organization at East Fishkill where he was involved with many developments in the area of chip test automation. At IBM he developed the Podem algorithm and other technologies that earned him 4 patents and several awards. He left in 1981 to join Wang Labs where he was exposed to the commercial EDAindustry. He left Wang in 1982 to start Gateway Design Automation – the company that delivered the now industry standard Verilog-XL to the market. In 1989 he sold Gateway to Cadence and continued at Cadence for 2 more years. He left Cadence to become a private venture capitalist. Since 1992, he has been an investor and a Director in a number of private companies. In 1996 he sold one of his companies, Frontline Design Automation, to Avant Corporation for a second venture success. Several of his present investments are in the EDA industry. Prabhu completed his graduate studies from Carnegie Mellon.

## Harper Reed
- Type: Angel
- Location: Chicago, Illinois, United States
- Relevant deals: 1
- Stages: Angel
- Focus: Communities, Social Media, Online Portals

Harper Reed is the CEO of General Galactic Corporation. He previously worked at Braintree as the Head of Commerce. He attended Cornell College.

## Western Development Commission
- Type: VC Fund
- Location: Ballaghaderreen, Roscommon, Ireland
- Relevant deals: 1
- Stages: Seed, Series A
- Focus: Medical Device, Health Care, Medical

Supporting communities to grow, investing in businesses to scale and planning for the future of the western region.

## ZenStone Venture Capital
- Type: VC Fund
- Location: Santa Clara, California, United States
- Relevant deals: 1
- Stages: Series A, Seed, Series B
- Focus: FinTech, Real Estate, Financial Services

Introduction of the investment thesis of ZenStone Venture Capital: Investing in passionate founders with extraordinatry vision and execution at post seed and early venture stages.

## Tom Preston-Werner
- Type: Angel
- Location: San Francisco, California, United States
- Relevant deals: 1
- Stages: Seed, Series A, Pre-Seed
- Focus: Software, Information Technology, Developer Tools

Tom Preston-Werner - Cofounder @ Preston-Werner Ventures

## Barry Pitcher
- Type: Angel
- Location: Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
- Relevant deals: 1
- Stages: Seed
- Focus: Video, Publishing, Social Media

Barry Pitcher

## Scott Chacon
- Type: Angel
- Location: San Francisco Bay Area, California, United States
- Relevant deals: 1
- Stages: Seed, Angel, Pre-Seed
- Focus: Software, Health Care, Cloud Security

Scott Chacon is a Git evangelist and Ruby developer currently as the Cofounder & CEO of Chatterbug. He is the author of the Pro Git book by Apress, the Git Internals Peepcode PDF as well as the maintainer of the Git homepage and the Git Community Book.
Source

## Vertical Venture Partners
- Type: VC Fund
- Location: Menlo Park, California, United States
- Relevant deals: 1
- Stages: Series A, Series B, Seed
- Focus: Software, Biotechnology, Health Care

Vertical Venture Partners is an early-stage venture capital firm investing in enterprise technology companies that target vertical markets.

## Gaingels
- Type: VC Fund
- Location: New York, New York, United States
- Relevant deals: 1
- Stages: Seed, Series A, Series B
- Focus: Software, Health Care, FinTech

Gaingels is a venture investment syndicate in service of the LGBT+ community and its allies, investing in companies with LGBT+ founders and C-suite leaders at all stages of growth, as well as in more established companies resolved on building more inclusive teams, with a global portfolio of 130+ companies and $70M in deployed investment capital todate. The Gaingels network also actively supports its portfolio in identifying and recruiting diverse talent to their C-suite and board leadership teams and fosters a vibrant global community of industry leaders, investors, operators, and entrepreneurs who share a common goal for positive social change through business and successful investments.

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