Teamwork opens new Cork campus, turns former office into start-up incubator

1 Dec 2016

From left: Teamwork founders Daniel Mackey and Peter Coppinger. Image: Clare Keogh

Fast-growing Cork software company Teamwork is to launch a new start-up incubator, after moving to a new campus with the capacity for 150 people.

Self-funded Teamwork – notorious for buying the Teamwork.com domain for €500,000 two years ago – is one of Ireland’s fastest-growing tech companies. There are over 268,000 companies using Teamwork products across the globe, with almost 2.8m users. Customers include PayPal, eBay, Disney, Forbes and Spotify.

Founded in 2007 by Peter Coppinger and Daniel Mackey, the company is entirely self-funded. It has increased turnover year-on-year and in 2015, Teamwork is understood to have recorded €8.8m in revenues and projects €12.4m for this year. It is eyeing a €20m revenue target by 2020.

‘We were an early stage start-up once, trying to make ends meet, while at the same time trying to get our business up and running and it was very tough’
– PETER COPPINGER

The company, originally a services business that developed its own business collaboration products when it found what was available in the market was sorely lacking, has increased its workforce from 20 to 70 in the last two years.

In recent weeks, it announced 50 new jobs, bringing the total number of employees to 120 in Cork by the end of 2017.

The new campus has been designed with the software developer in mind and returns to a long-forgotten practice of giving each developer their own personal office.

The office will also contain community areas, in-office libraries, quiet places, games rooms, hidden rooms, music rooms, hanging seats, window seats, a garden roof deck, garden meeting pods, a war room and, in keeping with the times, two slides.

Developers first

Teamwork opens new campus, turns former office into start-up incubator

In a first for a tech company in Ireland, developers at Teamwork are to get their own offices so they can work without interruption. Image: Clare Keogh

“As the company continues to grow, we needed a place that reflected our culture, as well as our passion for technology and great design, while at the same time, being a comfortable environment where the team can be productive,” Coppinger said.

“Every developer will get their own office, a concept taken from the book ‘Peopleware’, which advocates the need for private offices, in order to allow developers to have uninterrupted time. Both my co-founder and I are programmers and have seen first-hand the benefit this can bring. We see it as part of our job to provide the facilities to keep the machinery of our business humming along, and for us those machines are our developers.”

Teamwork also confirmed that their former office will be made available to SaaS start-up companies as an incubator with access to mentors, desk space and facilities.

“We were an early stage start-up once, trying to make ends meet, while at the same time trying to get our business up and running and it was very tough,” Coppinger said.

“It seemed like help wasn’t available without a catch. We want to play our part and help businesses succeed and create great products. While our current office is empty, we’re going to use it as a SaaS incubator and allow start-ups with a legitimate product to use the space with access to Wi-Fi, snacks, coffee and mentorship for free, with absolutely no strings attached.”

The company has embarked on a strategy to entice developers to move from Dublin and Europe and has created a website Escape to Cork to highlight the city’s work and lifestyle advantages.

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com