About
About David Smith.
Dublin-based. I've spent thirty years with companies trying to do something difficult: enter a foreign market, raise the next round, find the right buyer or appoint the right board. I'm one of the few who has worked all sides of that flow: Irish and European companies going out into the US, international companies coming into Ireland, and a US medical technology company whose European business I built from Dublin. Eleven of those years were in Silicon Valley, the rest in Dublin. The work has run through IDA Ireland, Enterprise Ireland, US Market Access Center, Tirna Partners, FirstCapital and Huawei's Service Provider Operations Lab. Other people were introducing me as Ireland's most connected person in Silicon Valley before I ever used the phrase myself. That work runs through MarketLink International, my firm, today.
Career arc
Early career, Dublin.
Financial services roles at Scottish Provident and Prudential Europe, and adjunct lecturer in international marketing at TU Dublin.
IDA Ireland and Enterprise Ireland.
Five years at IDA Ireland on inward investment, representing IDA on the Taoiseach's IFSC Working Group, then ten at Enterprise Ireland, six as Senior Vice President in Silicon Valley supporting 130 Irish companies into the US. Over €90m in sales and over €30m in funding. Across the full ten years I advised 180 Irish technology companies, 130-plus of them in Silicon Valley, with a 100% Investment Committee approval record: every equity case presented was approved.
US Market Access Center, Tirna Partners and FirstCapital.
Co-founder of Tirna Partners and SVP International at US Market Access Center, where I also advised government development agencies on their startup and US-entry programmes. Then Managing Director at FirstCapital, the London investment bank, where I set up the Silicon Valley office and built the firm's North American network of 150-plus corporate acquirers, PE firms and VCs. Alongside these, private client advisory through MarketLink International: strategy and planning first, then execution across sales, funding and market expansion, for clients including Cubic Telecom, FeedHenry, TMF Group and A&L Goodbody across the US.
Return to Dublin and Huawei SPO Lab.
Home to Dublin with FirstCapital, setting up its Irish office. Then CEO EMEA of a US medical technology company, building its European business and first country leadership in Germany and Italy. From 2020, Senior Consulting Partner at Huawei's Service Provider Operations Lab in Dublin, working on commercial strategy with Tier-1 carriers, recognised with the Huawei President's Consulting Award 2026.
The practice today.
MarketLink International: consulting on market entry, fundraising and M&A for growth-stage technology companies, alongside independent non-executive director and advisory board roles. Board and advisory work is capped deliberately, to give each mandate real attention. The Huawei work continues in parallel as a consulting engagement, with capacity deliberately held for board mandates. I approach board service as a practitioner of governance, committed to constructive independent challenge, rigorous oversight and continuous director development.
Work I'd point to
Huawei, 2020 to now
A global technology client took my Saudi Arabia plan and made it their primary strategy for that market. I'd sized the opportunity at more than $20m across 5G and AI, and set out the Vision 2030 politics, the sovereign wealth fund money behind it and what the competition already had in place.
A US medical technology company, 2019
I took a European business plan to the US board and came back with it approved and funded. I reported directly to that board. There was nothing there when I started. I set up the legal entities, hired the country leads in Germany and Italy and got the data protection and health data compliance right. I built a sales pipeline into hospitals and equipment makers. Then the US parent couldn't raise the funding it needed, and the rollout stopped.
Tirna Partners, 2014 to 2017
They had already tried North America once and it hadn't worked. An Irish telecoms billing software company, good technology, budget burned on the wrong Tier-1 carriers, nothing to show for it. I took the entry back to the start, through Tirna Partners. I repositioned the offer for the mid-market carriers they had walked past. I mapped everyone who had to say yes, in strategy, operations and finance. Then I opened the doors. By 2017 it was more than €5m in contracts across eight qualified North American carrier accounts, one of them a leading Canadian carrier.
Enterprise Ireland, Silicon Valley, 2006 to 2012
In 2009 the Taoiseach (Prime Minister), Brian Cowen, gave Chris Boody the Meitheal Award at a trade mission lunch in Silicon Valley. He ran product management for AT&T Wireless in Redmond and sat on the North American Wireless Advisory Board, a council of fifteen American telecoms executives that I chaired for Enterprise Ireland from 2006 to 2012. I set the agenda, chose the client companies to engage with the council and chaired the meetings. They mentored Irish companies landing in America, and they advised Enterprise Ireland on our strategy. Chris took a select few companies to his own team and to the people above him inside AT&T. The companies the council worked with signed more than $20m in contracts, $10m of it with AT&T. Enterprise Ireland made the same council standard in every territory it had after that.
IDA Ireland, 1995 to 2000
The proposal came back no. It kept coming back no for four years. A global insurer, and I can't name them. My job, for Ireland's foreign direct investment agency, was bringing major international insurance and financial services operations to Dublin, and I brought 120 of them in over those five years, doubling Ireland's inward investment volume. I sat on An Taoiseach's (Prime Minister's) Insurance Working Group as IDA's representative in those years. The numbers for Ireland worked from the first pass. Head office didn't want the work leaving the country it was already in. So I kept the file alive. Each time it came back I went in with a different argument. And each time there were more people inside the company willing to support it. Four years in, it went to their board. The board approved it, and they opened in Ireland and employed 200 people.
A venture I co-founded, 2002
We were a few weeks from launch when we heard the largest competitor in Europe was setting up in Ireland, and the news came from more than one source. I had co-founded a financial services technology company with two other senior executives. The funding was committed but not drawn, and we had pilot customers agreed. So we looked at what we could do against them in our own market, where we could win and what their response could be. And we decided not to launch. Then I wound it up: the investors, the legal entities and the people we'd taken on.