A lot has happened in the last 12 months. It being the first day back at work of the New Year, I wanted to write a post about some of the highlights of our first full (calendar) year in business.

Startups

The year started off well enough. We’d just finished a two month project for Mobivox, a Canadian VoIP startup. We’d been building their billing system and integrating it with their VoIP system since our first day of trading in October. The project went well, and Mobivox was later sold to Sabse Technologies, a company founded by Sabeer Bhatia one of Hotmail’s Co-Founders.

In early January we decided to shake up our business model a bit. We’d previously taken the route of web developers / PHP guns for hire. Ireland is a pretty small market, and we found that sufficiently differentiating ourselves from all the other web developers in the country to be no easy task. Given the broadness of the term itself, we decided to focus on our strengths on those that need them the most: startups. We also decided that in order to do this, we’d need some extra brains. (more…)

According to wikipedia, the Dragon’s Den is:

a venture-capitalist television programme that originated in Japan where the format is owned by Sony. The format, which now airs internationally, consists of entrepreneurs pitching their ideas in order to secure investment finance from business experts — the “Dragons”.

As some may already know, in 2009 the television show began in Ireland on RTÉ ONE. This post covers the technical considerations encountered when a web site / application appears on national television. (more…)

Nope. Just like our man Elvis, we don’t. We’re going to Soho instead*. This week our homepage got a much needed facelift, and with it comes a new address. We now have a base of operations in Soho, London to compliment our Dublin location.

Our new office can be found at 19 Greek Street (W1D 4DT), which currently houses a few other startups (Hmmm….wondering should it be renamed Geek Street?)  - all thanks to Irish entrepreneur Paul Walsh. But some space in an office does not a company branch make. So, we’re delighted to welcome to echolibre Helgi Þormar Þorbjörnsson.

Helgi comes with the right amount of PHP kickassness that we expect at echolibre; Helgi wirtes for PHP | architect magazine, and being a member of the PHP PEAR Group also rocks. Helgi will be heading up R&D and working with our UK clients, so we’re excited to see what happens in the next few months. We are also looking forward to connecting with the vibrant PHP and Open Source communities in London.

Today, myself and David are off to London for a bunch of meetings, and to meet the rest of the dudes at 19 Greek St.

If you’re a UK based startup and you need a fresh injection of PHP talent to your web app or development team, get in touch on freedom@echolibre.com. If you want to contact me directly, you can skype me on eamon.leonard.

*Yes, any excuse to play some Elvis Costello.