ROB SHANNON

Rob Shannon is managing director of Martinsen Mayer, a boutique technology recruitment firm that specialises in helping venturebacked organisations to scale their teams.

While 2020 went well for us, the fun was sucked out of things. As a company, we made a conscious decision to enjoy ourselves more. We want people to enjoy working with us, which was one of the reasons we undertook our first sponsorship initiatives in 2021, sponsoring golfers Paul Dunne and Rowan Lester on the European Tour. Hopefully we’ll have plenty of corporate days out in 2022!

The great news is that the Irish tech ecosystem is booming, and we’ve never been busier. We work with early-stage tech startups throughout Europe and locationagnostic companies with virtual HQs.

What we’ve seen since the onset of the pandemic is the increase in reliance on technology. There has also been an increase in availability of capital, which means a lot of startups are securing funding from international investors.

The market is hopping, and we’re catching up with Silicon Valley. We’ve been trying to get over to visit clients in San Francisco since last March and are hopeful we can go over next St Patrick’s Week. We want to meet with the VC community over there and also see new contacts we’ve made through the IDA.