Paddy Cosgrave's annual tech conference 'Web Summit' rolled out of Dublin in November 2015 and into Lisbon for a minimum of three years. The first Lisbon-based event took place last year and was deemed to be a success by those in attendance and, of course, by Cosgrave himself.
The company took Web Summit out of Dublin following a public spat between the government and the organisation. When asked this morning if he regrets how that episode played out, Cosgrave instantly replied:
"I have no regrets."
Mr. Cosgrave was speaking to Newstalk.com today as the company announced 40 new jobs in their Dublin headquarters.
"We're announcing 40 new jobs across sales and engineering. A year ago we had 3 people on our sales team, we now have 25. Most of those come from multi-national tech companies that are in Dublin. All of the hires that we made out of those companies have been absolutely fantastic and those are the companies that we're looking at again, as our basis for hiring great sales people."
The organisation hosts four events around the world; Web Summit in Lisbon, Collision in New Orleans, Rise in Hong Kong and MoneyConf in Madrid.
When asked if there is an appetite on his part to host a conference in Dublin once more, Cosgrave said, "As we launch new events and move our existing events around, we're always looking at cities. I think Dublin is an incredible city to host a conference. It was the birthplace of Web Summit and so many other great events. We'll definitely be considering it over the coming months."
So the door is not closed for good.
The company posted a very tongue-in-cheek job advert on their Facebook yesterday morning, making fun of previous scandals that have occurred in the company's past.
The new positions will be based in its Dublin office, which currently hosts around 150 employees.
As he prepares to travel to New Orleans for this year's Collision, which will see actress and entrepreneur Jessica Alba take to the stage, Cosgrave says he still enjoys what he does.
"I absolutely love it. It's fantastic. I love what I do. It's a complete privilege to work with an amazing team of people. We know have employees from more than 25 countries around the world based in Dublin and a tremendous amount of incredibly talented Irish people. I'm just looking forward to growing the company even larger."
More information about the new jobs can be found here.
