Irish Founders' Playbook for Winning the US; with Dylan Scully, Frontline Ventures
About this episode
Dylan Scully discusses strategies for Irish founders looking to expand into the US market, emphasizing the importance of a transatlantic approach and practical insights from his experience.
Dylan Scully is an early-stage investor at Frontline Ventures, a transatlantic venture fund investing in B2B tech and AI across Europe at pre-seed and seed, and in the US at Series B and beyond. Frontline’s thesis: to build a category-defining company, you need to win both Europe and the US; it’s not an either/or. In this conversation, Dylan draws on his background as a founder (Matchday) and his time at Accenture’s global innovation team to give data-backed, practical advice to Irish founders thinking about US expansion. We cover the “SaaSpocalypse” debate, what enterprise buyers actually value, the real cost of entering the US market, and what gets Frontline excited at the pitch table. Show Notes Frontline’s dual fund strategy — early stage across Europe, growth stage in the US, and why the transatlantic network matters The “SaaSpocalypse” — will enterprises build everything in-house as code costs go to zero? Dylan’s clear-eyed view on why most won’t, and why AI-native startups beat incumbents bolting on features Build vs. buy in the age of AI — why enterprises buy opinions, reliability, and a product roadmap — not just lines of code; the Donna portfolio example on AI agents…
People in this episode
Guest: Dylan Scully
Topics covered
- US market expansion
- B2B tech
- AI startups
- investment strategies
- SaaSpocalypse debate
- enterprise buying behavior
Keywords
- Irish founders
- US expansion
- venture capital
- B2B software
- AI
- investment
- market entry
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Frontline Ventures, Accenture, Signal AI
Products: Matchday
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