North West Christmas convo: James Mulvany of Igniso

Christmas is almost upon us and it’s been a well and truly exciting year for the North West business community.

With many of the region’s businesspeople no doubt looking forward to grabbing a glass of wine and putting their feet up, allowing themselves to slip into a post-roast dinner snooze while pretending to listen to the kids, at Bdaily we thought we’d bring you closer to the personalities behind some of the North West’s most exciting enterprises.

Today’s festive catchup is with James Mulvany, founder of digital firm Igniso.

What did your business achieve in 2015?

2015 was a big year for Igniso as we launched the online radio platform Radio.co. Since the launch in August our clients have broadcasted more than 75m hours of audio to 16,175,355 people in just over four months on our platform.

Six weeks after launch, Radio.co was the platform chosen to broadcast the first global pop-up radio station, Radio Everyone.

It was fronted by Comic Relief founder Richard Curtis and aimed to put pressure on world leaders to fulfill the project’s Global Goals – 17 different targets created by the UN including fighting poverty. It had 250m listeners in 117 countries in one week and I was really proud Radio.co helped play a part in it.

What were some of the bigger challenges you faced this year?

The launch of Radio.co was by far the biggest challenge we faced at Igniso.

I don’t think any of us expected it to grow as quickly as it did, and because of the speed at which it grew it was a huge task to make sure the platform didn’t buckle under the pressure of the demand.

We reacted quickly to any problems that arose, kept everything up and running, maintained rapid growth and certainly learnt a lot of valuable lessons in the process.

Does your business have anything exciting planned for 2016?

Working in technology it is vital that we continue to stay relevant and build products that our customers want.

Innovation is important and we are always looking for ways to make our products more innovative whilst delivering as much value to our clients as possible. We have got some plans up our sleeve for Radio.co in 2016 so watch this space!

Give us one tip for a budding entrepreneur

Persevere – whatever you choose to do it is important to stick at it and don’t give up. Running a business has a lot of ups and downs and there are some industries, like radio, that are more cutthroat than others. It is important to carry on through adversity but always remember the lessons learnt.

Where’s your favourite village/town/city in the North West, besides where you live?

Huddersfield, lived there for five years during my student days. Great place to go to University, with friendly people and beautiful surroundings and immediately felt at home when I moved there in 2005.

What would be your dream job?

I have always been interested in the radio industry and did have ambitions of becoming a radio presenter as a youngster. I’m a big foodie so perhaps a cooking radio show; there is definitely a gap in the market there.

Do you have a favourite Christmas song?

I quite like Lily Allen’s version of Somewhere Only We Know. It’s not technically a Christmas song, but you only seem to hear it at Christmas.