Larry Bass was 13-years-old when he started out in the entertainment business through pirate radio, which led to a career as a sound and lighting technician in the music world.
Shinawil is a 26-year-old film and television production company. The majority of its content has been non-fiction entertainment television, with shows like Popstars, You’re A Star, The Apprentice, Dragons’ Den, MasterChef, The Voice of Ireland and now Home of the Year and Dancing with the Stars.
While it has a core team of full-time staff, any one of its productions can have up to 200 people employed while it is shooting. It has its headquarters in Sandymount, Dublin, and an office in Belfast.
What prompted you to start-up in business?
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I’ve always worked for myself from a very young age, and the founding of Shinawil came from a desire to make a documentary about the Dublin rock band Aslan.
With Aslan... Made in Dublin, Shinawil was born, not from a business plan, but from a huge desire to create the highest quality content.
What was your back-to-the-wall moment and how did you overcome it?
Within the first two years of starting the business, we were dealt a significant financial blow. A major client became a casualty of the dotcom crash – the day after we delivered a number of significant films to them. As a small production company, we were very exposed.
My founding partner left the business to pursue his career. Being married with four young children, I had little choice but to knuckle down and focus on finding new clients and new projects to move forward.
What deal would you cite as a game changer for the company?
In 2000, I came across the television format Popstars at a trade fair in Los Angeles. That one show completely changed the complexion of the business. Not only was it a commercial success, but it also connected me at an executive level with my business mentor and partners for the following years.
What were the best and the worst pieces of advice you received when starting out?
The worst piece of advice was around investing in technology, which evolves so rapidly. We’ve invested in various equipment based on seemingly sound advice, but even the wisest experts can be overtaken by the speed of change in the modern world.
Describe your growth funding path.
Our recent growth has been financed through internal company resources, with support from Enterprise Ireland in the post-Covid period.
Looking ahead, our future growth will be powered by new investment as part of the next phase of our company’s growth strategy. The need to invest in our team and develop new shows makes this an exciting opportunity for investors. We’re building Hollywood in Ireland.
How will your market look in three years and where would you like your business to be?
One thing is certain: people are watching more content globally, and they’ll continue to do so on new platforms emerging every year. We must ensure we’re serving viewers across all of these platforms.
What are your annual revenues and profits?
Our turnover was €33 million in 2023 and €38 million in 2024. We’ve been growing rapidly and have reinvested most of our earnings into developing new content.
What are you doing to disrupt, innovate and improve?
We were first to introduce entertainment television formats and among the first to explore auxiliary revenue streams such as phone voting.
We’re committed to diversity, both in our business operations and in the stories we tell. In our drama productions, we’re creating new financing paths and partnerships. We also produced Ireland’s first virtual reality drama for Meta.
How are you deploying AI in your business and what impact has it had?
AI has instilled significant fear in our industry, particularly among actors and writers. At Shinawil, we will always prioritise working with the best practitioners in their fields, from writers and actors to craftspeople.
That said, AI can support nearly all of us in certain aspects of our work, and we must remain open to technological advances that help us work smarter, not harder. AI is already proving to be a game changer in areas like visual effects, post-production, and script analysis, and it’s likely to impact other parts of the industry in the near future.
