Pad Thai Cosgrave
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Camille Thai worth 20m?
Amazing the ego a few followers on Twitter can give a lad like paddy
It’s a sizeable enough entity now
just completed the mental calculation to 20m and then read your post 
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How founders of Web Summit stopped clicking with each other
Four years ago Paddy Cosgrave and David Kelly, his friend from Glenstal Abbey, a Co Limerick boarding school run by Benedictine monks, started to chase unicorns. The pair had co-founded the Web Summit in 2009 alongside Daire Hickey, a friend of Cosgrave’s from Trinity College Dublin. From running the tech event, Cosgrave and Kelly had a bulging contacts book of investors and promising start-ups. They planned to use their expertise in the tech scene to establish a fund that would attract money from investors and direct it towards some promising start-ups.
It was a play that Cosgrave had used before. Prior to running the Web Summit, he had been president of the Phil in Trinity College Dublin. Alongside Hickey, he had managed to attract tech superstars such as Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter, and Niklas Zennström, the founder of Skype, as speakers. Hickey proved adept at luring big names, securing Oscar winner Al Pacino in 2006. Cosgrave, Kelly and Hickey leveraged those contacts to attract star wattage to the Web Summit. Now Cosgrave and Kelly would follow the same pattern to coax investors to the Amaranthine Fund, named after a flower that never fades.
Patrick Murphy, who had been running a venture capital fund for Universal Music Group, was brought on board to help run the fund. It started with a bang, attracting $30 million (€26.5 million) from investors, including $2 million from the Web Summit in return for a 30 per cent share of the profit. Amaranthine used the money to back companies such as Pointy, eventually sold for $160 million to Google, and Hopin, a video teleconferencing business valued at $7.95 billion last September.
At the start of this year Kelly and Murphy began to plan a second fund, to “double down” on the successful strategy. Then cracks began to appear. Cosgrave wanted a greater share of profits diverted to the Web Summit in recognition of its contribution to the fund’s success. There was already tension between him and his schoolfriend. Kelly also became concerned about Cosgrave’s campaigning on social media, where he had criticised IDA Ireland, the businessman Denis O’Brien, the HSE, the media and the tanaiste Leo Varadkar.
Kelly was also concerned that Web Summit resources were being used on Cosgrave’s political projects, including €10,000 to settle a defamation action by Dublin GP Matiú Ó Tuathail. In March 2020, Cosgrave had donated €1 million of the company’s money to charity without telling other directors or shareholders.
On February 24, Kelly texted Cosgrave to say that his social media persona was damaging the Web Summit brand. “Ah Jaysus. What’s the concern? How does it even impact you? That just maybe a deal slips through the cracks,” Cosgrave responded.
The text messages continued, with the tone becoming more confrontational. At one point Cosgrave claimed he had seen “kompromat”, a reference to photos allegedly taken during Kelly’s stag weekend. Kelly claimed this was an attempt to blackmail him into leaving the company.
Kelly says Cosgrave told him in March he no longer wanted to collaborate on a follow-up fund with him. The following month Kelly quit as a director of the Web Summit but continued to act as managing director of Amaranthine. Kelly claims Cosgrave then threatened to “destroy” him. He decided to press ahead with a second fund.
In May, Cosgrave said he was “flabbergasted” to discover Murphy and Kelly were “secretly” setting up a new fund, Semble, that would exploit the “data, brand, goodwill and intellectual property” of the Web Summit. In late September Manders Terrace, the Web Summit’s parent company in which Cosgrave has an 81 per cent stake, filed a High Court action in Dublin against Kelly. A similar case was filed in San Francisco, where Amaranthine and Semble are based. Cosgrave had declared war.
When Kelly, who owns 12 per cent of the Web Summit, filed his defence to the claim last month, it hinted at a now rancorous relationship between the old schoolfriends. This month Kelly filed his own High Court action against Cosgrave, claiming shareholder oppression. In an accompanying affidavit Cosgrave was accused of using Web Summit resources “for the benefit of his private household” and of bullying and harassing staff.
Kelly also claimed that Cosgrave “harboured an intense animus” towards Hickey, and was trying to force him out of the business. Kelly claimed Cosgrave had “repeatedly attempted to enlist me in attempts to coerce Mr Hickey to surrender his beneficial shareholding in the company”.
When Hickey learnt of this campaign, he sought legal advice. The former journalist, who has been working in PR in New York, last week filed his own case against Cosgrave, echoing many of the claims in Kelly’s legal action but including more damaging revelations. Cosgrave, he claims, allegedly hacked the email system of a rival, the Dublin Tech Summit, in 2016 to find out what it knew about the Web Summit’s operations.
Hickey, who resigned as a director of the Web Summit in 2019, also claims Cosgrave cost the company sponsorship and support from businesses in Ireland by launching a campaign of “abuse” against O’Brien on social media. Cosgrave did this because of suspicions that O’Brien was backing the rival conference. The businessman had provided more than €200,000 sponsorship to the Web Summit in its early years.
Hickey also claims Cosgrave bought a 0.25 per cent stake in Camile Thai, a food business, from Trevor White, the founder of the Little Museum of Dublin, using €50,000 of company money without notifying other shareholders. Hickey said White was a personal friend who had introduced Cosgrave to his future wife, the model Faye Dinsmore.
Cosgrave denied Hickey’s “baseless claims” last week, describing the legal action as “opportunistic” and saying he had given a “one-sided” version of the circumstances surrounding his exit from the Web Summit.
Manders Terrace, where Cosgrave is the largest shareholder, will shortly file a defence in the Hickey case. The company is named after the street where Cosgrave and Kelly lived when they set up the Web Summit. The couch from the house was signed by the trio and moved to the Web Summit’s headquarters in Dartry as a reminder of the tech conference’s humble beginnings. It’s hard to see Kelly and Hickey ever sitting on it again.
@colincoyle
Uh oh
Oh Paddy
MSM are very exercised by Paddy all of a sudden when he becomes vocally anti-establishment.
Ah theres been lads biding their time for years waiting for a chance like this to nail him
Tis his fellow elites from Glenstal trying to nail him.
Theres nothing surprising about that
Funny the MSM become very interested when he starts to speak out about the establishment.
i know a couple of glenstal old boys. theyre sound lads. paddys class seems to be a bit of an anomaly
Strange they’d report on such serious allegations against a high profile person alright.
Strange how they sat on the Varadkar story.
You do it to yourself you do
I can smell a big fat dose of Karma cooking for Paddy the Cunt.
Yum yum….
You and no one else
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I presume you’re being purposely stupid here?
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