Business Showcase : Element Wave

By @SimonCocking. Interview with Dorothy Creaven, Co-Founder & CEO of Element Wave. Headquartered in Galway, we build game-changing technology that drives mobile experiences.

Describe the company – the elevator pitch …

Element Wave is the fastest real-time marketing automation platform, designed for betting and gaming. We specialise in creating data-driven technology to drive loyalty and monetisation on web and mobile. Our platform increases mobile in-play bets by up to 10X and that’s just the start of it.

How are you different?

Element Wave is designed to create real-time mobile engagements. No one else has that kind of focus on real-time mobile engagement. Element Wave is not just a push notification service.; we specialise in real-time APIs that deliver contextual, personalised, event-triggered messaging to increase loyalty and tackle mobile user churn. Our platform can deliver 100,000 notifications per second which makes it the fastest mobile marketing automation platform on the planet. Our speed ensures a brand’s call-to-action is in front of players 10 times faster than competitors.

We power mobile marketing automation for the iGaming industry, serving market leaders like bwin.party, The Football Pools and Betsson. In our six years of mobile marketing and data analysis, we’ve found that our platform is a perfect fit for betting and gaming brands. This industry loves innovation and invests heavily in advancing their own technologies so it’s a great match.

Why will the company / product do well?

One reason is that our technology is second-to-none. Our SDKs are lightweight but robust. We are the fastest in the market and we care deeply about our customers. Another reason is our technology team. Our world-class engineers are always iterating, ensuring our tech is the fastest and best for our customers. Our mobile marketing team of experts is similarly dedicated with thousands of hours of mobile marketing campaigns under their belts. They know what works and really get a kick out of solving problems for our customers.

Where are you based?

We are based right in the heart of Galway City and we love it here. There’s a thriving tech scene in the city that we’re proud to be a part of with the likes of Ex Ordo, The Portershed, and OnePageCRM. It is exciting to see Galway growing so much, and it has changed a lot since I was in university here. Our office is in a fantastic space under the structural ‘wave’ of the Dockgate Building, overlooking the docks and the Atlantic coastline. I can easily say that we have the best view of any office in Galway!

When was the company launched?

Element Wave started life in December 2010 and began trading in mid 2011. It was founded by James Harkin, our CTO, and I initially as a mobile app development company. We were successful in gaining some early contracts with Sage CRM and Ericsson, living solely on coffee and working off a cheap Mac. It was exciting to start a company in the middle of a recession – I’m sure people thought we were crazy. But six years later we’re still here. We’re not the same company – we no longer do app development, and have changed to a product based business – but the essence of what we built our company upon is still the same: we love what we do, we create technology that feels like magic, and we have fun doing it. Our rockstar team is what makes us great, and I regularly feel a massive sense of pride for what we do and how much we have achieved.

What have been your biggest wins to date?

Our biggest win is, without a doubt, starting a company with just a second-hand Apple Mac to creating a game-changing product that the top companies in the world are buying.

On another note, we’ve also won some great recognition in our industry and in our market. Just recently, technology advisory company Gartner named us as a global mobile marketing leader, and in 2016 we honoured by the EGR B2B Awards with two industry awards in London.

What type of people (market segment) are you trying to attract to your product?

Although we specialise in betting and gaming, we also attract customers across a broad range of industries. Our customers range from betting and gaming to logistics and media. We are looking forward to expanding our market reach in 2017 into mCommerce and Retail.

Tell us about your team?

We have such a great team, full of talent and great personalities! We have a good mix of marketing, engineering, sales, and finance in the office. We love to hire a mix of nationalities with team members from Ireland and all over the world. We’re still relatively small, but one of the things I enjoy the most is seeing everyone get stuck in. There’s a great atmosphere, everyone’s happy to dig in together on a project, or head out for a Friday evening beer.

What are you long term plans for your product/company?

Growth! We’ve already seen significant year-on-year growth in both our revenues and team since 2013. In 2017, we will focus on continuing that trend and keep the great momentum we’ve built up. This year is all about partnerships and expansion, and we will continue working hard to ensure that our service remains the absolute best in class.

What are your favourite tech gadgets?

I’m going to have to say my iPhone. I’m never more than one inch away from it at any given point which is likely a problem! I recently was given a Kindle Voyage to get back into reading books, and I love it. There are no distractions on it – no checking my emails, social media updates etc – so I find that it really helps me concentrate on the task at hand. These days our attention spans are very scattered and short-lived, so anything that helps me unwind and just read plain text is a winner.

I also love activity apps, especially those related to running or skiing where you can track where you’ve been and how many kilometres you’ve covered during the day. Very satisfying for my competitive side!

How do people get in touch with you?

People can read more about what we do on our website: elementwave.com. I’m on LinkedIn here, Twitter here and we have a great newsletter delivering lots of tips and news about mobile marketing (sign-up here).

If you would like to have your company featured in the Irish Tech News Business Showcase, get in contact with us at Simon@IrishTechNews.ie or on Twitter: @SimonCocking