About the Author

DC Cahalane is a Venture Partner at specialist AI investment firm, SVV (Sure Valley Ventures), where he oversees the firm's activities across the Republic of Ireland and manages platform and portfolio activity across the firm’s UK investments as well.  He was recently appointed VC-in-Residence at University College Cork, where he works to strengthen the connection between academic innovation and commercialisation opportunities.

With over two decades of entrepreneurial experience, DC has founded four companies and has been instrumental in driving growth, partnerships, sales, and marketing for several other high-profile startups and scale-ups, including Teamwork.com and Trustev. He is the founder of Republic of Work, the largest startup and innovation hub in Cork, Ireland. Most recently, he served as Group Chief Marketing Officer at Dogpatch Labs, recognised as one of Europe's premier innovation hubs and known globally as a leading startup accelerator. He also served as Chief Operating Office and Chief Commercial Officer of one of Europe’s largest COVID-19 testing and vaccination companies during the pandemic. 

DC is a globally recognised expert in startup ecosystems and more specifically corporate startup engagement programs, having collaborated for more than 15 years with companies like NVIDIA, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Meta on their local and global startup engagement programs. DC has been involved in the development of more than a dozen dedicated accelerator and incubator programs, as well as mentoring on all of the world’s top programs from Y-Combinator, Techstars, Antler, Google Launchpad, Facebook Accelerate, Codebase and Ireland’s National Startup Accelerator, NDRC. 

A well known figure within Europe's startup ecosystem, DC is a founding council member of Scale Ireland, the representative body for innovation-driven enterprises. He has been appointed by the Irish government to the Enterprise Digital Advisory Forum and the SME Growth and Entrepreneurship Taskforce, advising on entrepreneurship and technology policy. An experienced board member and non-executive director, DC has served on numerous boards of private companies and industry organisations.

Passionate about fostering entrepreneurship, DC has assisted over 1,000+ startups globally in launching, securing funding, and gaining visibility through his extensive international network. He is a frequent conference speaker and a regular guest lecturer at universities in Ireland, the UK and abroad.