Ireland may have looked like the underdog, a tiny nation, just four-and-a-half million people-strong, when it was facing economic ruin in the financial crisis of 2008, but you should never underestimate the strength of its entrepreneurial spirit.

It is no Wall Street but Belfast’s Adelaide Street has proven to be a happy home over the last five years for one of the North’s most high-profile inward investment projects.

The payments industry has a new billion dollar company. Online payments company Stripe is announcing more than $80 million in Series C funding, at a $1.75 billion valuation. Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund led the round with new investor Khosla (Keith Rabois) and existing investor Sequoia joining, with Allen & Co. also contributing.

In 2011, Eoghan McCabe was sitting in his friend’s coffee shop when he came up with the idea for Intercom, an online platform that enables companies to deliver personalized responses to their customers.