Bebo founder Michael Birch with his wife Xochi
Joining the two high-profile speakers already announced for October’s Web Summit, Jawed Karim and Eric Ly, are two of Ireland’s tech community leaders, Chris Horn and Liam Casey, and Michael Birch, the man who founded Bebo and subsequently sold to AOL for $595m in 2008.
Chris Horn co-founded Iona, an Irish software company which IPO’d in 1997 as the fifth largest in Nasdaq history. Chris is involved with the Science Gallery in Trinity College Dublin, Cloudsmith, a web-based software community, and Gridstore, an Irish storage grid company based in Silicon Valley.
Although Irish born, Liam Casey is now based in Shenzhen near Hong Kong, China. Liam founded PCH International, a consumer electronics supply chain management company. PCH International serve industry-leading clients in Silicon Valley and across North America.
Michael Birch founded Bebo and later sold it to AOL for half a billion at the height of the social network’s success. Michael has since invested in Eventbrite, Branchout and Friend.ly. Lately, Michael has also launched a new niche social network Jolitics that focuses on politics and current affairs.
The Dublin Web Summit, the seventh in a successful series, takes place this October 27-28th. Super early bird tickets are now on sale for €395 until July 29th, after which normal ticket prices of €995 will apply.
Image courtesy of edublogger on Flickr
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