On The Hunt: Powster
Our investigative unicorns get up close and personal with the team at Powster :)
Tell us about what happens at Powster
We are a creative agency based out of the London Fields area in Hackney, with a solid team of 15 people. We make websites and applications for movie studios and music artists.
Our main product output consists of massive movie websites (think Star Wars, Captain America, Warcraft, Hunger Games, Fantastic Beasts, Woody Allen, etc) and interactive creative builds for musicians (Netsky, Chase and Status, Alesso, etc).
Our movie websites are all powered by our showtimes ticketing platform, the largest movie marketing platform in the world, which powers official cinema listings for a large majority of the top box office films every year. Millions of cinema-goers visit our movie websites every week and we’ve won numerous awards for our work.
Our clients include the six major movie studios, as well as over 50 other movie studios from around the world.
We build cutting edge projects that range from our standard ticketing platforms through to bleeding edge creations like in-browser 3D galleries, interactive music videos, and virtual reality for the web (webVR).
And what’s it like working at Powster?
There are a lot of perks to the social side of Powster. We get access to early movie screenings and tickets to some of the biggest premieres in the UK, and have Picturehouse Membership for all employees. Last year we rubbed shoulders on the red carpet with Harrison Ford at the Star Wars premiere, and have attended a few big name Marvel launches including the premiere for Captain America and the pre-screening for X-Men: Apocalypse, among dozens of other screenings. We also get invites to award shows and industry events, including this year’s Screen Awards, and the UK Music Video Awards, both of which we have nominations and team tickets for.
Apart from the fancy stuff, we have a very relaxed atmosphere in our office, which has tons of natural light and is filled with plants. We’ve got our very own private cinema in the back room, where we have our own screenings and show and tells. We’ve got flexible working hours and we often have team lunches and socials outside of the office. We are a small team so cultural fit is really important to us, and many of us see each other outside the office on evenings and weekends at birthday parties, weddings and awesome events we invite the whole team to.
We’re also in an amazingly vibrant and hip area of London, just off of Broadway Market and London Fields, with tons of delicious lunch and drinking spots nearby. In addition to that, we’ve got private bike storage, a fully stocked drinks fridge, fancy coffee machine, office shower, football table and table tennis, and even an HTC Vive to play with.
So what’s Powster’s main goal?
Earlier this year we became part of the Vista Group, who acquired a 50% stake in Powster. The Vista partnership will support the growth of the company with their massive portfolio of film industry software and their connections in the industry. We are also opening an office in Los Angeles, CA, to maintain our strong relationships with our clients in the region and continue to expand our American markets.
Our main ambition is to keep on creating award-winning and creative work that is fun to make and amazing to use. We’re especially excited about the potential of webVR and webGL to bring virtual reality to a much larger audience. We like to think that anything is possible when pitching, and if we haven’t done it before we’ll pull together, work it out and make it happen. This comes from having a drive to make the unseen! When bolstered by the very diverse and strong team, we can adapt to anything thrown at it, from technical, interactive builds to large scale video productions.
How did you hear about Unicorn Hunt?
We used to be a very small team and we expanded naturally within our own networks, but eventually with all the work coming in, we realised we needed to expand our reach. We had heard great things about 3beards and found the job boards through that community, and now half our dev team has come through Unicorn Hunt. We love the quality of candidates that comes through this channel, the social media pushes and the trimmed down and simple postings that make it easy for candidates to find our jobs.
What advice do you have for startups that are hiring?
You might understand what your company really does perfectly, but that doesn’t mean everyone else does. It can be hard to clearly explain what your company does in a succinct way, but this is probably the biggest factor when recruiting candidates: to make sure they really know the aims and outputs of the company, because that is what they will be devoting their lives to! So try running your “About Your Company” section by some people in a few sentences and see if they can grok it right away before posting your job spec. It can mean the difference between truly passionate candidates and those who misinterpret what they’re in for.
What is your one piece of advice for someone applying to Powster?
Make sure you’ve got an active github (if you’re a dev) and that your personal website isn’t down (this happens more than you’d think!). Aside from that, show your passion in your email/cover letter to us and be specific about what you like about Powster, what you can contribute, and mainly what you’d like to learn. This shows you’ve done your research and that you’re really excited about joining our team. Also, if you’ve got any experience with webGL/webVR/Three.js then please get in touch as we’re always on the lookout for people with these skills.
If your company was a tea time treat what would it be and why?
Popcorn! It’s really hyper, bouncy, and salty, and once it starts popping it keeps on multiplying (just like our projects)! Plus, we’ve got our very own old-school machine in the back-room for all our private screenings.
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