Case Studies

2013 has been an exhilarating ride for Wellington’s Carnival Labs. In August the company secured a $2.4 million venture investment co-led by Gary Vaynerchuk and Lerer Ventures, with others taking part including Mike Lazerow, Google Ventures and FlyBridge Capital.

Another milestone was achieved with Guy Horrocks (the company was founded by Guy and Cody Bunea back in 2008) being finally able to navigate a lengthy application processes and open a New York office, thus basing himself full-time in the U.S.

“This time last year we had six staff in total. Now we have six in sales and account management in New York, with two more coming on board soon; five in our Auckland office and seven in Wellington,” explains Cody.

Cody has remained in Wellington, the software development base and head-office for the company. “People often think I have the worse deal with Guy getting to live and work in New York but I think I have the best,” says Cody. “As far as creative technology hotspots go, Wellington is one of the top locations in the world.”

The company intends to stay in Wellington preferring it to a US development base. “New York has micro market issues and we need to be on the ground there, but Wellington as a city functions well as a hub for head office business. There are cheaper operational costs than other cities, a time zone advantage and we have world class talent as far as innovative software engineering goes,” says Cody. “And there is something to be said from being able to work away from the noise of Silicon Valley.”

Cody enjoys the support and sense of community in the industry here and recently took part in a peer networking group organised by Grow Wellington, a good opportunity to connect and network with other companies in the export arena and share inspirational stories. “Wellington is compact enough to enable opportunity for face to face work with other ICT players.”

He is also an advocate of the region’s lifestyle. “Personally speaking I love everything about living in Wellington; the waterfront, the café and bar scene and the outdoors, things like quality golf courses. I am way luckier to be based here and I still get to travel internationally about six times a year.”

It’s a busy and challenging time for the company at present, with development work coming simultaneously with growing the company. Although talent in software engineering is world class in Wellington, numbers are thin on the ground; the company opened its Auckland office to increase its ability to capture much needed talent. Cody is watching Wellington developments like the Enspiral Dev Academy (an innovative ICT up-skilling boot camp seed funded by Grow Wellington and supported by Wellington City Council to meet the growing demand for smart ICT workers in the Wellington region) with interest.

Next year will see Carnival Labs head into new frontiers in the U.S. with its real-time mobile marketing and messaging platform. Cody says the company has transitioned away from producing custom mobile apps even though they have been very successful; particularly so with Core Push.

It’s been two years since the company released the Core Push software as service messaging notification product used to promote DreamWorks’ animated movie Puss in Boots. In this campaign, Smartphone users in California were sent a message that made their phones vibrate and purr like kittens. The company also gained further vital U.S. exposure eight months ago with The Convention Floor Pass app for CNN-Time for use in the US presidential contest.

Now the Core Push brand has been discontinued and the product will now be re-branded under Carnival's brand umbrella as the "Carnival Mobile Marketing Suite" with the company concentrating on the platform, developing tools for brands to manage their users and publish campaigns across their mobile audiences.

Cody says the biggest motivator for Guy and himself at the moment is their shared passion for being thought-leaders in the mobile space and educating brands to build value and engage their users in ongoing relationships.

“We have felt really angry for so long about brands throwing money into black holes. Success would be stopping them from continuing with a print mentality of building apps for a life of six months in the market, then dumping them and their user base with them. Phones are in your pocket and an opportunity for real-time marketing that is game changing.”