2014 Tas Award
As part of the 2014 Tasmanian iAwards gala evening event held on Thursday 3 July 2014 at the Henry Jones Art Hotel in Hobart, the Minister for State Growth, Minister for Energy and Minister for Environment, Parks and Heritage., the Hon. Mathew Groom MP presented the 2014 Pearcey Tasmania Entrepreneur Award to James Cuda.
In introducing the winner of the 2014 Pearcey Tasmania Entrepreneur Award, Chairman of the Pearcey Foundation, Wayne Fitzsimmons said: "The Tasmanian Pearcey Award program has been in place for some ten years now. The support by the Tasmanian Government has been fundamental to ACS and Pearcey in establishing and sustaining this award. Thank you Minister Ferguson (Minister Michael Ferguson is, amongst other portfolios, responsible for ICT and Innovation in the Tasmanian House of Assembly). We are proud to recognise outstanding professional young men and women from Tasmania who are running a risk, making a difference and inspiring others. We encourage you to nominate potential Pearcey Award winners next year as past winners speak to the great education and entrepreneurial environment here in your fair state."
James Cuda
The 2014 Tasmanian Pearcey Award winner, James Cuda, graduated as a mature aged student from the Tasmanian TAFE, Clarence Campus in 2004 specialising in Graphic Design, Multimedia and of course IT. Not content with taking a regular job he focused hard…and started his own business soon after graduating from school - Savage Media; a boutique "digital agency" competing with the best in the land creative agencies offering on-line as well as off-line brand experiences for his company's clients. Savage Media won several prestigious awards including the 2008 Platinum Printing Industries Craftsman Award.
Being a classic techo, this young man then puts his hand to designing his own front end content management system which allows administrators of any skill level to simply edit live front-end websites - a customer centric solution which assists clients lift their productivity by investing in his company's new Taipan CMS technology.
Then to make a real difference, Savage Media transforms itself into Savage Interactive, a fully-fledged software development company focussed on designing and developing sophisticated digital imaging software for the emerging Apple iPad ecosystem. This new software package, Procreate, turned into one of the best-selling creative tools for the iPad with the latest 2013 release becoming the global #1 ranked iPad app in the vertical known now as 'desktop-grade content creation' on a tablet.
One very entrepreneurial activity James undertook around the time of the 2013 Procreate 2.0 launch was to sponsor a digital Morgan Freeman video which went viral after being posted on youtube - 12Mill+ views in a few days. Savage Interactive was suddenly noticed by mainstream media globally. His product is the global exemplar bitmap illustration tool on the iPad platform outselling Photoshop and the like, globally.
Today, at the ripe old age of 35, James Cuda leads a team of eight professionals, a mix of artists and engineers right here in Hobart. His customers are the global consumers with 80% located in the USA, Japan and Europe.