WANdisco co-founder believes company will be as big as the likes of Oracle and Microsoft

There is a big billboard on the wall of one of David Richards’s many offices around the globe which proclaims that “imagination is more important than knowledge”.

It is a statement that he may have borrowed from Albert Einstein but it is one that Richards firmly believes in and a message that he is determined to spread in Belfast.

Sheffield-born Richards is one of the co-founders of WANdisco – a big data tech company that you might not automatically recognise – but one that he believes will one day be as big as the likes of Oracle and Microsoft.

More than a decade ago he hopped on a plane from the UK with just two suitcases and headed to Silicon Valley to be part of the wave of "new companies such as Amazon and eBay who were changing the way the world did commerce".

Then, in 2005, together with Jim Campigli and Dr Yeturu Aahlad Richards, he set up WANdisco, whose primary aim is to ensure that an organisation's really important information is secured and is always available.

Global collaboration software

In a nutshell it provides global collaboration software to the software development industry.

The founders decided they did not want venture capital, or angel finance or even private equity to develop their business and instead invested their own money and did not take salaries to get it up and running.

One month after Richards started WANdisco (Wide Area Network Distributed Computing) it secured its first customer and then successfully managed to remain customer-funded as it won bigger and bigger deals.

In 2012 WANdisco decided to do an IPO on the London Stock Exchange – it raised more than £24 million and today its market capitalisation is almost £300 million.

It boasts a Fortune 1000 client list – from Hewlett Packard to Intel, Barclays Capital and Walmart to name a few.

At the heart of the business, according to Richards, is not only “imagination” but the “best and brightest” in the industry and 25 of those can currently be found in WANdisco’s expanding Belfast office.

Two years ago it set up a software development centre in the city, which Richards says is well on its way to reaching its job creation target of 36 – and more.

In Belfast to visit the operation he said it now plays a “core role” in WANdisco’s global operations.

“This isn’t a support centre – it’s creating IP, its developing new innovations and it is all being done by local talent. Everyone that works with WANdisco in Belfast is local. We’ve not imported anyone from the US to run the Belfast office. It’s all about the talent that we have found here. We’ve definitely got some of the stars of the next generation working with us in Northern Ireland,” Richards enthuses.

Excellent talent pool

He said he was convinced to invest in the North because of its excellent talent pool. “I knew the university system was good – I knew we would find industry ready graduates because Northern Ireland has a great education system – it is one of its strengths,” he added.

WANdisco was offered £360,000 by Invest NI to support its investment project in Belfast – the financial assistance according to Richards was useful but it was not the main driver which brought him to the North.

“Northern Ireland is a cost-effective location. I also think more important than the cash is the assistance that is on offer from the various offices of government to investors to get the business operational,” Richards added.

He believes the current corporation tax – 21 per cent compared to 12.5 per cent in the Republic – is “fair” but also believes that there are companies who will be attracted to locate in certain locations because of “lower tax rates”.