This week we delve deeper into our local startups and turn the spotlight to Black Pug Studio. The team from France and Spain moved to Galway Technology Centre to start their company. They are now a year old with some heavy hitting clients and big plans:
Why does Black Pug Studio do?
Black Pug Studio Limited is a multicultural start-up operating in all Europe. We are a creative company! That includes Web Design and Development, Communication, Localization, Software Development and some other cool things that we’ll reveal soon(ish )! We work for medium and large companies such as Nestlé or Oxfam but one of the company objectives is to support Galway City including new and already established companies in the area. But beyond that Black Pug Studio will encourage and support Irish language and culture as part of its core operations and initiatives.
Why did you choose to base yourselves in Galway?
The most obvious answer is because Galway is a fantastic city! The culture, the atmosphere, the people and many other things are wonderful. It’s a very vibrant place, there is always something going on. We find that extremely stimulating and inspiring. When your job is to be creative and to innovate, where to be better than such a beautiful location. All the activities and events that you can find here attracted us, or should we say, retained us here because some of us lived in Galway before we created the company.
What is the background of the team?
To be fully honest, video games were part of our life since the 80s and at some point we thought that with our combined skills we could do something very interesting - take a direction in our life that meant a something for us. Tony Moreno, Director of the company, previously worked in the video game industry since 2004 for renowned companies such as Blizzard Entertainment (i.e. World of WarCraft ) or BioWare / Electronic Arts as a Community Lead for the critically acclaimed Star Wars: The Old Republic.
Julien is a great autodidact developer. Since he was a student he’s been developing great tools, mini games and web sites! For him it was time to take it to the next step and accomplish big things. We have a bunch of very talented people working us as well such as Tiphaine, an impressive Print Artist (basically she makes art from her deep knowledge in typography and colorimetric technics ).
Do you think having a close start-up community is a benefit to you?
We strongly believe in the effervescence of a community, especially for Tony who has been a Community Manager for many years. Empowering such a community can only enhance creativity, innovation, motivation and passion. A passion that we obviously share because our company is young yet. It’s clear for us that being able to interact with other groups, companies and people is beneficial at all levels. It can also bring business to us, let’s be honest. We want to take a big part in Galway’s start-up booming time.
If you could make one call for help to the community, what would it be?
We want to facilitate interactions between all of the community. Give an excellent visibility to everybody of what’s going on. Today it’s very easy to do so with all online technologies and platforms. If well executed, it can boost the initiatives of the community and we can see a better engagement of start-ups but also individuals who want to help and make things happen! So basically we want to help the community to connect and share with more people to drive inspiration!
