It’s hard to believe it was just under 2 years ago that we opened our doors here in The chq Building and yet here we are at the end of 2016 and we’ve just expanded to nearly 40,000 sq ft spanning across 3 floors.

Following on from the opening of The Vaults last November, we’ve transformed the mezzanine floor of The chq Building into an indoor ‘Urban Garden’.  This is a unique flexible space that can be used by the Tech community to collaborate, network and work alongside the newly built ‘High Growth Office’ space for multinational tech company Pivotal Labs.

All Photos: https://goo.gl/ieprfv

This latest phase of expansion marks an important point in the evolution of Dogpatch Labs.

Over the last 2 years the space has grown into a dynamic innovation hub with a thriving community of over 40 companies including Irish startups, multinationals, social enterprises and corporate offsite innovation hubs, along with a diverse membership of entrepreneurs, developers and investors. We’ve become a focal point for the broader tech and startup community too, with The Vaults event space playing host to over 200 tech and innovation events with over 5,000 attendees since its launch last November, making it the most active event space for startups in Ireland.

This growth has been helped significantly by the backing of key partners such as Ulster Bank, ESB, whose support has helped turn the idea of a world-class space for startups into reality. This expansion has been made possible by growing in tandem with Pivotal Labs, resident with us since August 2015. They’ve been an ideal partner – from mentoring startups to supporting developer meetups, they are completely aligned with the tech community ethos in Dublin and Ireland.

Since its opening, The Vaults has become the central event space for tech in Ireland, and now with the Urban Garden we’ve created a unique hot-desking space enabling us to have a much greater impact on Ireland’s startup ecosystem – including new initiatives like First Fridays for Startups which supported by Google for Entrepreneurs which is an monthly open day involving mentoring & workshops open to all Irish startups.  

Paddy Flynn, Google Ireland said, “Our partnership with Dogpatch Labs is helping to broaden the reach of Google’s existing community engagement with the startup community across Ireland. The Urban Garden provides an important physical focal point for the community – providing much needed space for startups from across Ireland and as well as a complementary layer to the programmes we support such as Startup Weekend, Adopt A Startup and StartupNext.

Half of the new mezzanine floor will be dedicated ‘High Growth Space’ for Pivotal Labs, a Silicon Valley headquartered tech company which set up its Dublin office in Dogpatch Labs in August of 2015. Over the last year, the Pivotal Labs Dublin team have grown rapidly from 1 person to an office of 80 staff working out of Dogpatch Labs, and has become an active member of Ireland’s tech community sponsoring Community events and meetups.

Our new development would not have been possible without support from Ulster Bank and The Strategic Banking Corporation of Ireland, a government led strategic funding source for SMEs, who are also co-financing the development.