Entrepreneurs find answers at the touch of a button

Jun 23 2008 by Karen McLauchlan, The Journal

‘The dream of creating the next Facebook or Bebo still inspires people’

Digital entrepreneur Nick Bell

Andrew Mernin meets the internet entrepreneurs leading the region’s online revolution.

THE North East is fast becoming the epicentre for internet entrepreneurs. Buoyed by the rapid development of internet interactivity – loosely known as Web 2.0 – an increasing number of people in the region have set about creating the next Facebook.

One of the youngest is Jonathan Grubin.

While many of the same age are enjoying holidays knee-deep in mud at a festival, backpacking around Europe, or fruit-picking to fund their social lives, 17-year-old Jonathan has weightier things on his mind.

The A-level student from Newcastle’s Royal Grammar School runs his own online empire.

Between homework and lessons, Jonathan has set up more than 11 websites.

His business, which he launched when he was 12 with a website offering free screensaver downloads, made £75,000 last year. This year he launched ForFree4U.co.uk – a site offering visitors free music players and cameras for signing friends up to its advertisers.

But the budding Bill Gates is not the only young person building his own Bebo kingdom.

An initiative managed by the North East Regional Portal this year awarded 36 aspiring online entrepreneurs £2,000 each to start their own businesses.

The 36 business ideas included a digital record label, a shop selling goods made in a day care centre, and a company offering advice and recipes for barbecues.

Other recently baptised dotcom moguls include a 19-year-old who has launched a student information site and a Sunderland University student who has a portal that allows unsigned music bands to sell their music.

One man who is certainly not wet behind the ears when it comes to web business is Northumbrian Nick Bell, who witnessed the burst of the original dotcom bubble at close hand.

The 24-year-old made almost £1m in the Nineties through the sale of various websites, including social site teenfront.com – which he sold when he was just 16. He later bought back the site and turned it from loss to profit. His other online enterprises included studentmax.com, teen-chat.co.uk and brit-teen.co.uk.

Mr Bell warns the next generation of web entrepreneurs that landing a six-figure bid for a site isn’t easy.

He says: “There is a huge romance surrounding the web that anyone can do something if they have a good idea. In the late Nineties you could create a site and have five people visit it but still put a huge price tag on it, which you can’t do today.

“The dream of creating the next Facebook or Bebo still inspires people and you can certainly grow an online business quickly and reach a global audience overnight, which you can’t do in the offline world.

“A lot of the challenges we faced first time round have been overcome because payment online is now standard practice. Back in the Nineties, one of the biggest challenges was that people were reluctant to pay for things online.

“We had to convince offline partners and bricks-and-mortar companies that the web was part of the new world and I think those issues have gone now.

“However, it’s more difficult to make an impact today. In the nineties we managed to get over half a million users to our site every month.”