Ajaz Ahmed BEM, Founder of Freeserve Pt. 1 - "Business Is About Dreaming."

withinu Presents The Narrow Road Podcast

"I want to be able to look back on my life and say I've made a difference."

In this first part of a two part Podcast, Danny speaks with Internet Pioneer Ajaz Ahmed.

Huddersfield based Ajaz is a company advisor, a business speaker and he writes a column for a national business magazine. He helps small and medium sized companies and is also an experienced Exec Officer, Non-Exec and Chairman of FTSE & AIM companies.

He's in the 'Yorkshire Business Power 100,’ and he sits on the Advisory Board at the University of Huddersfield Business School.

Ajaz is best known for being the founder of Freeserve which was once the UK's largest Internet Company.

It had a market cap of £9bn and eventually sold to France Telecom three years after launch for £1.6bn.

We discuss how he started working at Dixons and how fate led him to move to PC World in Leeds. Whilst managing the PC World store, he realised that none of his staff could tell him how to get on the internet. This led to his eureka moment and the genesis of Freeserve.

Ajaz explains how after months of work to get to launch, a press release from BT led him to think that Freeserve was dead in the water.

This resulted in a massive last-minute change of strategy, leading to the product changing its name and rewriting its offering to customers.

Eventually, Dixons launched Freeserve in September 1998, and it became the UK's largest ISP three months later.

An amazing story of vision and persistence from one of the UK's true internet pioneers - the person who pioneered internet access for the masses in the UK.

Part 2 covers the launch itself, the unbelievable growth of the company, how a national newspaper summoned Ajaz to London to ask him to sell them 50% of Freeserve and how the sale of the business led to Ajaz leaving Freeserve.