SouthLabs Paysandu

Some months ago Daniel told me about this group of young programmers, in Paysandu (a city up north Uruguay), that had implemented a 3D game with the most basic resources, with zero funding, and completely self taught on most of the technologies involved.

This presented both an opportunity and a challenge. One thing we are clear about is that we want to be very careful on our hires and avoid growing the team size as much as possible, but on the other hand young and passionate programmers are a very rare type of resource. Plus the idea of having a core team, and then a network of partners cells, independent and specialized is appealing to us.

So we said, let's approach them and see if iPhone development appeals to them and we can work something out. We did the 5 hour road trip, met with them and agreed on a model were we provided the hardware + training and we would split the profits of any application we would release together. I think it's reasonable bet for both sides, they are investing time, and we are putting in resources. If this works out they get to make a living out of what they love, while living in Paysandu, which is something they were struggling with, while we get a trustworthy team where we can develop games, and channel any iPhone contract driven work we may come across.

We've been working for two months already, mostly on the development of a 3D game for the iPhone due for April. We've successfully managed to port most of their 3D Max, and Blender know how to use it within the iPhone environment, and we are very pleased both with the advance level they are achieving and with the work dynamic. At the moment of this writing we are paying our second visit to their hometown. We believe face to face meetings are a healthy thing to have every couple of months.

We'll see how this plays out, it's a long shot, but so far is looking very good, and we are very pleased with the whole model to such an extent that if this works, we would like to replicate it with other teams, probably even other technologies.

Coming up with a logo

To come up with a logo we hired the services of team of freelance designers (thanks Lucía &Alejandro). We wanted our logo to convey a couple of ideas/concepts, among them: creativity and creative environment,software development, laboratory as in new & edgy technology, and also southern as in coming from South America, Uruguay to give it some geographical identity. Some weeks after our initial meeting we were presented with the following three logo sketches:



Being a partnership of two means that sometimes we need some form of outside help to settle differences, and this was one of them, so we decided to have a quick survey to check what the majority of our friends & family thought of this.

After consulting via email with 20 friends/relatives, out of which 12 answered our call, the results were the following:

Option 1 received zero votes.
Option 2 received 2 votes.
Option 3 received 10 votes.

The best thing out of this, other than the overwhelming evidence of what the majority finds better, was that some feedback was more than just the vote, and were valuable contributions that helped mutate the original proposal into what finally became our logo.



In case you are wondering what the diamond with the S is all about, it's the cue for a compass pointing south, but as one of the consulted put it "I like this best because it looks all superman and stuff".

From the beginning

Southlabs is a story about a couple of software developers from Uruguay that at some point during 2009 decided to part ways from their former employers, after developing enterprise information systems for corporate clients for more than 10 years, and start a new software house, attempting to leverage years of experience, and a desire to develop a product based business model, more than a contract based one.

But this is only the beginning, in the meantime this blog is meant to tell how this story unfolds and hopefully become a place where ideas are exchanged.