It’s rare that you get to sit down and talk to a female founder of a successful software company, although the current trend is that of an increasing number of female founders in tech. Georgina Lupu Florian started her bold journey in 2015, when she created
, an award-winning web and mobile design and development company, with a team of 80 people, based in Transylvania.
Wolfpack Digital is now opening a branch in Dublin, because they fell in love with the Irish approach to innovation which includes the passion to match their own team’s dedication to bringing performance and beauty in the world through technology. Their motto is “Powerful web and mobile apps, start-to-end” and their focus industries are fintech, healthtech, transportation, IoT, beauty, entertainment, and education. The company attracts tech talent and clients alike especially through a diverse portfolio, and a coherent company culture combined with a slick and colorful brand. The entire story is centered around the Wolf symbol.
“The idea for the company name came from my surname, Lupu, means wolf in Romanian. I never thought it would stick like it has, and eventually it became the seed for so much more. In everything that we do, we are inspired by the beautiful attributes of the wolf: agile, performant, communicative, playful, team player, dedicated, organised, and in harmony with its surroundings. The intention was to bring my diverse interests together while bringing beauty and performant technology to the world, by putting together a fantastic team,” says Lupu Florian.
Gina has a multidisciplinary background: She is an Engineering graduate, she has a BA in Psychology and two Master’s degrees, one in PR and one in Electronic Engineering and Business Management from King’s College London.
“Entrepreneurship was the way for me to connect the dots and bring together my passion for tech, design, communication, health, product management ... etc. I wanted to build a company that delivers equally beautiful UX/UI design, and high-quality, high-performance web projects and/or web apps for various industries.”
Their recent accomplishments include winning the European Technology Awards, the CSS Design Awards, and winning the AlphaHub accelerator.
We are here to help with digitalisation, automation, design thinking, and everything needed to build useful products that delight users
We were curious to learn why they chose to open their first overseas office in Ireland.
[ Their Irish portfolioOpens in new window ]
so far includes Ireland-based Musgrave, National University of Ireland Galway, FlexiDrive, ecoXpress, FluidUI, and other entities, ranging from startup companies all the way to global corporations.
“Although most of our clients are from the US and UK, we found ourselves having a striking number of collaborations with Irish companies, and enjoying the experience. We simply click with the people here, and we share that inner fire that is so important when it comes to innovation. Our plan is to expand our portfolio even further and work with startups, institutions, and innovation departments alike, while scaling up the projects for our existing clients, and being closer to them.“
“Web platforms and mobile apps help people connect, solve problems, play, and embrace business opportunities. We are here to help with digitalisation, automation, design thinking, and everything needed to build useful products that delight users.”
“Dublin is a direct flight away from our city, Cluj-Napoca, and the cities are quite similar in many ways, including their size and tech vibe - Cluj is called the Silicon Valley of Central Eastern Europe and is one of the safest cities in the EU. You can find many Irish pubs here, so please come visit!”
We were also curious to learn what Gina believes about the current trend for affirmative action to support entrepreneurship for women. How does this flavor impact a company’s culture, for example?
“I don’t see myself as an extreme feminist, yet I am happy to see more diversity on the tech scene - I think this will make the world more balanced and the tech products more useful and inclusive. We need diversity in all walks of life. Although diversity of opinion, for example, might be harder to manage, in the end it’s totally worth it. We need to see more examples around us to feel inspired that we too can achieve a lot. My journey has not always been an easy one, as a young female CEO, but I believe it pushed me to better myself and this has paid off. I chose to see challenges as real opportunities for personal transformation. I’ve been told that my leadership style has an important impact on nurturing a healthy environment for growth,” Lupu Florian also believes that “the world needs more kindness and empathy in key decision making.” However, “balance is key.”
The experiences we offer our team internally help keep the motivation levels up
As Wolfpack Digital is recognised as one of the best employers in their region, it was natural we’d ask her more about how to build a productive work environment that delivers results while being healthy. “We know that high team motivation translates into higher performance, and we believe in truly being in tune with our values in everything that we do. Consequently, we recruit accordingly and believe in the sustainable growth of our team - sustainability is a mindset covering everything we do. We especially invest time and resources in building a feedback culture - we create those recurrent contexts to do so, for example. We take special care during the recruitment phase to make sure we hire high-performers with a passion for their field. The experiences we offer our team internally help keep the motivation levels up, and the diverse projects portfolio is a plus - you can work on a healthtech project, and then switch to finance, transportation, beauty, or education.
“The culture we have built really helps us keep our team together in these unstable times, when developer shortage is an issue. We say that we are more than a software team, we are a pack. To expand our wolf-theme even more, we’ve chosen our social responsibility direction to be that of environmental sustainability, and we actively participate in team-buildings to help reduce the carbon footprint (planting trees, making the city green, awareness campaigns ... etc). Otherwise, our office space, both the virtual and the on-site one, is super colorful and this too encourages people to be authentic and show their true colors. And the plan is to bring more of our vibe to Ireland too!”
[ For more information visit wolfpack-digital.comOpens in new window ]