Emerging category - Demonware

Entrepreneur: Dylan Collins
Business Activity: Computer Games Software

Launched in 2003, DemonWare is the world leader in the field of networking middleware for multiplayer computer games. The company’s software powers online gaming across Playstation, Xbox and PC platforms. Emerging in a multi-billion dollar industry, DemonWare’s software plays an integral role in the success of a game and provides the fundamentals to the vast entertainment community.  The company employs 18 people in Dublin, Vancouver and Los Angeles.

The company’s software provides the backbone for the gaming internet and offers direct integration into video games with the ability to connect PC devices as well as Playstation and Xbox players across the world. The software also tracks and monitors player performance, statistics and behaviour.

DemonWare’s customers are the biggest games publishers in the world and include Activision, Ubisoft, Atari, Sega and THQ. Some of the biggest games using DemonWare’s technology include Starship Troopers, Splinter Cell, Smackdown, Call of Duty and Outrun. DemonWare supplies to publishers and studios based in the US, Canada, Europe and Japan.

Entrepreneurial Questions

What vision prompted you to start up in business?
Seeing all these really clever people in Trinity College and wondering whether we could take on the world together.

Describe your progression from start-up to current status
We started with four people in a small office in the centre of Dublin. After flying around the world to meet the people who would eventually be our customers, we fine-tuned the product design and started building. We closed an investment round in one of the toughest years in venture capital history (2003/04) and started selling. Three years later, we’re the leader in our market. We still have an office in Dublin as well as one in Vancouver and Los Angeles.

What was the biggest risk you have taken?
Taking on the biggest company in the space when we were a year and a half old. Closely followed by making our second sale ever to one of the biggest games companies in the world - had our product not stood up, we would have crashed and burned.

Who or what has contributed most to your success?
The team - a group of people far more intelligent than myself. Those guys are what has made the company the success it is.

What is your biggest business achievement?
Becoming a leading company in one of the toughest industries in the world on a shoestring budget.

What is the best piece of business advice you ever received?
Just ship it.

Express the biggest challenge you see your industry facing
The games industry undergoing rapid growth which it must match with a similar maturing of production processes and financial expertise.

Name a famous international entrepreneur you admire and why
Dermot Desmond-always a couple of steps ahead of everyone else.

How do you recharge your batteries?
Cooking. Deejaying.