Sports website developer sets up shop at IncuHive New Milton

A FIRM that develops and manages websites and apps for the world’s largest sports federations, leagues and clubs – including FC Barcelona and the Premier League – has set up shop in the A&T’s new entrepreneurial hub IncuHive New Milton.

Pulselive, which has a distributed team across London, Basingstoke, Madrid, Mumbai in India and Melbourne, Australia, has ambitions to widen its recruitment pool outside of the capital.

Development director Luke Guppy said the company is working towards building links with local schools, colleges and universities.

Among Pulselive’s clients are The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), the International Cricket Council, World Rugby, football clubs including Leicester City and Barcelona, and the Premier League.

Luke (38) explained that many of the six-strong team based in New Milton live locally, but were commuting up to Basingstoke.

“Ultimately we would like to partner with Arts University Bournemouth, which specialises in design and media, to offer graduate placements,” said Luke (pictured), who lives in New Milton.

“Basingstoke only has one technology college, so this move was largely around recruitment and tapping into the local market – we are growing; four years ago we had just 30 people and now we employ 90.

“Much of my career has been based in Bournemouth so I know the network well – our MD Wyndham Richardson went to Bournemouth University.”

Senior frontend developer Alina Coslov, another member of the New Milton team, is volunteering to teach schoolchildren in Totton to code, and last year Luke spoke at a Digital Wave conference held at the Bournemouth International Centre.

“We want to share our experiences and expertise with those who aspire to work in this industry, and give back to the community,” said Luke. “People think you must have a specific degree, but this is not necessarily the case.

“We want to provide opportunities for entry level people starting their careers.”

Luke started his career at Wimborne Magazine, spending four days designing advertising and a day at college studying photography and computer design.

He then worked as a graphic designer at Conrad Advertising – now called Artavia – progressing up to studio manager, going on to Redweb where he built a frontend development team and finally Pulselive in 2015.

Pulselive has sports expertise, from juniors all the way up, and the content management system (CMS) it operates is underpinned by sports data.

“Our people know these sports inside out,” said Luke. “A lot of digital agencies will use a third-party CMS, but we build our own platform. This means if our clients want a specific feature in a product, we can give them that.

“Everything we build is about enhancing the experience for sports fans. We are constantly improving and developing the way that fans interact with sport – it’s a constantly changing world and we help our clients keep up with that.”

He continued: “We know what can happen with live data and we always have to be pre-empting all possible scenarios – a yellow card being retracted, a player name change, a match delay - and making sure our code can support that.

“So, for instance, last season a Bournemouth game was delayed because of a bomb scare in the stadium – we have to think ahead about what we will show on the site when this kind of thing happens. And the code we set up does that because of course the client cannot do that manually.”

The team is settling in well at IncuHive New Milton, and Luke said it is the perfect base from which to start connecting with local educational establishments.

To find out more about business and facility-hiring opportunities at IncuHive New Milton in Compton Road, email hello@incuhive.co.uk or visit www.incuhive.co.uk