From moonlighting as game developers to living the dream

START-UP NATION: Red Wind Software: Mobile app and gaming company:IT WAS A case of first up, best dressed for mobile app and gaming company Redwind Software. Creators of one of the first games in iPhone's App Store, the Dublin company's clients now number Heineken and Elvis.

“We’ve known each other since we were three,” explains Conor Winders of his relationship with his Redwind co-founder David McMahon. “We grew up playing computer games in each other’s houses and we thought the next logical step was to make one ourselves.”

When the iPhone App Store launched in 2008, the pair saw their chance. “It made it possible for people like us to put something together and get it out to a mass market,” says Winders.

Having studied computer applications at DCU while McMahon studied multimedia, both were holding down “proper jobs” with evenings and weekends spent developing games. Playing movie quiz games on the Xbox with movie buff McMahon, Winders says: “We thought ‘why not do something like that for mobile because nobody else is doing it’.”

Released towards the end of 2008, their game Movie Challenge sold for $1.99 a pop. “I just hoped to clear my credit card over the course of a year with sales of this thing…but sales were good. We were surprised by how well it did,” says Winders.

And then the phone started to ring. “I got a phone call one day from a guy from one of the agencies that works with Heineken saying ‘I’m playing one of your games and I love it, can you do a Heineken version of this?’”

Winders and McMahon continued the day jobs, moonlighting as game developers before eventually making the leap to go solo in 2009. And then representatives of the King made contact. “Elvis was around the time we were packing in our full-time jobs to do our own thing,” says Winders.

With over 2,500 Elvis trivia questions, you can now play The Official Elvis Challenge by yourself or compete with friends to see who knows more about the King.

“It was validation for us that our games were as good as we thought they were when you had people like Heineken and Elvis Presley Enterprises wanting to work with you,” says Winders.

He feels being one of the first in the App Store when it launched was critical. “If you were searching in the App Store, you were going to find our games and our games were around the top of the charts. That basically drove everything to us.”

In 2011, Redwind took office space and now employs seven people, including a JobBridge intern who they’ve since made permanent. The name of the company derives from Winders surname and McMahon’s red hair.

“It makes for a great slide when you’re doing presentations, because you can just do a big circle around his red hair and another around my surname,” says Winders. Last March, the company was awarded €50,000 under Enterprise Ireland’s Competitive Start Fund in return for a 10 per cent ordinary equity stake in the company. “They’ve been absolutely fantastic,” says Winders, praising the support and mentoring received from Enterprise Ireland.

But how did it feel to concede a 10 per cent stake? “While the company is doing okay at the same time you’re kind of giving away 10 per cent of nothing unless you do well, so it’s in everybody’s interests to do well.”

With the majority of their business currently stateside, Winders’ brother is doing business development for Redwind in LA, while the company is hoping to establish a New York base this year.

Developing mainly for the iPhone and the iPad, and now for Apple TV, he says that’s where the company’s passion lies.

“We do Android stuff as well and there is no ignoring the size of the Android market and certainly brands like Heineken want their games on Android…but when we are building our own games we don’t build for anything other than Apple. You can make money in the iPhone and iPad App Store but you can’t make money in the Android market at all,” says Winders. “People don’t seem to want to pay for software on Android.”

Priding themselves that their apps look and feel great, he says future plans are about making money from their own games rather than through client work.

“We feel we are very good at what we do but, long term, we would like to be making money off our own original IP as opposed to making money off doing it for other people,” says Winders.

Hoping to increase staff numbers to 10 this year, previous job advertisements on the company’s website are a hoot, promising successful applicants Redwind underpants and the opportunity “to work above a bar”.

So do 29-year-old Winders and 30-year-old McMahon still game together? “We still game. We have an Xbox and a Wii in the office. It’s all research.”