FirstVirtual Group plc was a ‘technical incubator’ established by Adrian Tear and Tony Sellen following their exit from Business Geographics Limited in 2000. The business aimed to take shareholdings in exchange for development work; sweat for equity.
The website was one of several designed around this time by Pete McDonagh at Codesign.it, who Adrian had met while working on the 2000 London Election project.
The ‘dot com crash’ of March to October 2000 didn’t exactly help First Virtual Group along but two projects did get off the ground:
- Lead Hat Limited – An investment in a web development company led by Adrian Marshall.
- Exactmedia Limited – An investment in an online marketing and rewards company.
Faced with the partial collapse in demand for online development, and difficulty in fund-raising, Tear and Sellen abandoned the concept of web development for third parties’ and set about developing profitable consumer web sites for themselves.
The new business, Allegran Limited – founded in 2002, went on to develop lottery, dating and property web sites. It was sold to Daily Mail General Holdings three years later in an eight figure deal.