This week I speak to Diarmaid Mac Aonghusa, Managing Director at Fusio; Ireland’s leading web strategy, web design and web development company.
Last week they tweeted that their domain name was registered 17 years ago and it made me curious about how, in an industry where businesses rarely last more than a few years, they’ve stayed strong over all these years.
How did Fusio get started?
In 1995 Mat May and Julian Douglas (who were friends of mine) were working in the Professional Audio business supplying recording equipment and studio systems. They knew that the internet was going to be a big thing so started looking into how they could make a business out of producing CR Roms and websites – I had just returned from living in California and was working in tech support for the launch of Windows ’95 (!) and joined them – and that is how Fusio was born.
What would you say were some of your ‘big breaks’?
Having a good network of business contacts in the early days who were willing to take a gamble and let us setup websites for them – these where the days when the clients often did not have internet access so the first thing was to get them setup with a modem. Content for the sites would come via fax or photographs (or slides) would be couriered around. The scanner was a vital tool.
Entertainment.ie came from the launch of Internet Explorer 4. One of its features was a list of “Channels” that would be always on the user’s desktop and MS wanted local content for them. They asked us to come up with an idea and we came up with the idea of an events website – “The Night Decider” was an early idea for a name but we settled on “Entertainment Ireland” which, after a HUGE battle to get the domain name morphed into “Entertainment.ie”.
Would ‘getting in early’ have been a factor?
Yes, it meant you got to make a lot of connections fast and now, when dealing with potential clients, they feel some comfort when dealing with an established company with a strong reputation.
What have been your biggest challenges?
Really the same as most businesses – dealing with economic downturns. If businesses are in trouble then they cut back on spending everywhere and that makes things a challenge for us. What we need to do is to convince them that by investing online they can be saving money.
Also, our battle to get the entertainment.ie domain name. We had a meeting with Mary O’Rourke who at that time was the Minister for Public Enterprise. At that stage UCD were running the .ie domains and we were complaining that our business was being damaged by their refusal! Things have changed a lot since then and the IEDR are a very different organisation.
I first heard of Fusio from Entertainment.ie. Is it a big part of what you do at Fusio, or just another one of your projects?
Entertainment.ie was created by Fusio but is now a separate company (it’s MD is Julian Douglas). Our offices are in the same building and Fusio still supply technical and development services to them. The original founders – Julian, Mat and myself are all still directors and shareholders in both companies. There are 10 people working in Fusio and 16 in Entertainment.ie so it has outgrown us! They now have a new ticketing business as well as all the other content.
There has not been another website of it’s kind in Ireland that has seen such success and longevity. What would you put this down to?
There have been many that have tried thinking it must be an easy thing to do but in fact there is a huge amount of work involved and managing the finances has taken quite an effort. The site’s database and CMS has developed over many years and for someone to create something that would have all the features we have would take a lot of investment. Our SEO is excellent for huge number of really important entertainment related phrases and this is very important for us. We’ve also put a lot of effort into our branding by promoting a lot of movie and music related events. We were very pleased to see that Vodafone used our logo in an ad recently and they didn’t feel the need to use our name – they felt the market knew who we were just from the logo….
Tell me a bit about the team at Fusio. How many have been with you from the beginning? Has there been much turnover? What sorts of skills and qualities do you feel are important to have when working for Fusio?
We’re a mix of designers, developers and managers. We’ve had a lot of luck with the people who’ve worked with us over the years – they tend to stay for a long time and we try to make it an enjoyable place to work. It’s normally a very relaxed atmosphere. In Fusio there are three of us who have been there since the start. It’s a bit clichéd but what we are looking for are people with a “Can do” attitude. We always want to be able to offer our clients a solution to their needs – we never want to tell them something is impossible – there’s always a solution.
I also think it’s great if people have a strong involvement in some other non work activity. One of our developers is the drummer in Swords (www.swordsband.com), our lead designer spends almost all non work time surfing and I am the Chair of Educate Together.
There’s always talk about how hard it is to find coding talent in Ireland, have you found this to be the case?
We have had difficult in the past but have been lucky in the last few years. We never use recruitment agencies despite their endless calls and emails to sell themselves!
Things are constantly changing in technology and the online marketing industry. How do you keep up with it all?
That is a real challenge and the only way is to love technology – if you get excited about the latest thing and want to know about it then it makes it all that bit easier. The same applies to social networks – there is no way you can offer a professional service to your clients if you’re not using these sites all the time – that’s the only way you’ll know what’s happening, what works and what doesn’t.
Do you find that the market in Ireland restricts how large as a company you can grow? Do you seek out and have you won any jobs for work outside of Ireland?
Absolutely. We often get calls from people with business ideas (especially for mobile apps) that are aimed at the Irish market and which are simply not viable because the market just isn’t big enough. If you want to make it work then try and create a product or service with an international audience. We have a few clients in the UK, the US, Spain but our main success outside Ireland has been in the Middle East – specifically the UAE and Qatar. Last year we built four sites for a major bank in Qatar and we are doing more work for them now.
With so many web development companies and online businesses there is much more hype than talent involved. Is it possible to just keep your head down and do good work or do you have to work the PR machine when you are in this industry?
Working the PR Machine is something we have not been very good at and we are aware of this. We do too much of the keeping the head down and working and not enough of the shouting our name from the rooftops. Perhaps we’re a bit cynical of it all and laugh at silly PR stunts when we should be doing the same things ourselves! Of course our success in staying in business this long is also related to taking quite a conservative approach to things – we know that we have to pay the wages and the rent – there is no-one there to do it for us so the idea of spending a fortune on a risky PR campaign is too much of a risk.
What’s your advice for web site owners about what to look for in selecting a web development company and planning a new site/app or a redevelopment?
Experience. (well, I would say that wouldn’t I?). It’s easy for people to tell you what they can do but if they can show you where they have successfully carried out similar work in the past and you can go and talk to those clients then you can have a lot of confidence in the people you are dealing with. If you just pick a random email from India to outsource your work too then don’t be surprised when things don’t end up quite as good as you thought they might. We have had a lot of stories from people with nightmares from outsourcing so think very carefully before going down that route.
Many thanks to Diarmaid for taking the time to speak to me and provide a great insight in how to run a web business successfully.
It would benefit any up and coming companies — and few that have been hanging around — to listen well and take on some of these great ideas.
