The CEO of French mobile games company 2 Paper Dolls has said he is committed to his plan to locate an operation in Dublin, encouraged by the affordable office space, skilled employees and living costs.
In a detailed and honest blog post, Louis Ravenet outlined his reasons for remaining committed to moving his start-up to Dublin early next year.
Ravenet said the drama of the past week around the IMF and ECB loan to the Irish Government and the whole argument around corporation tax has not swayed him.
In fact, he accepts the argument that Ireland’s corporate tax structure is directly responsible for €250m in revenues collected this year through the presence of firms like Dell, IBM, Facebook, Zynga, Google, Microsoft and others.
“For this revenue alone, the Irish Government is justified in its commitment to maintaining its low tax status.”
2 Paper Dolls creates entertaining and purposeful games for mobile devices, giving players the chance to interact with friends, community and brand, while training computers to solve problems. Its management team has more than 20 years of experience in creating successful technology companies and products, including the design of Microsoft CRM.
The right conditions for start-ups
Ravenet said the environment Ireland provides is perfect for start-ups like 2 Paper Dolls.
He said: “2 Paper Dolls is definitely working a contrarian stream here: Office space, skilled employees and living expenses are very low in Ireland at the moment, in spite of Ireland’s being the European technical support and distribution hub for most American companies.
“And we’d all profit by recalling that, despite the current market perturbations, Ireland has spent a decade doubling down on technical investments in cloud-computing infrastructure, with capacity barely tapped.
“So, superb capacity, along with a blessedly cool environment (lower temperatures mean less cost in maintaining massive server farms) equals lower cost for superior cloud infrastructure.
“For web service providers, communication companies and just about any business with a pulse, this lower cost provides a competitive advantage. Especially if one’s targeted market is outside Ireland, such as the USA, Continental Europe or (gasp) China.
“Plus, I have gotten to know the folks running Enterprise Ireland’s effort during a prolonged ‘due-diligence’: they are an impressive lot. We look forward to working with them.
“This is why we’re still committed to moving our start-up to Dublin early next year,” Ravenet said.
