Category: Operated

Ascog Farm
Ascog Farm on the Isle of Bute, Scotland, is run as a partnership between Adrian and his wife, Elspeth. Day to day the farm is managed by Elspeth’s father, Joe, a sturdy veteran farmer.

A lot of effort has gone into improving the land and buildings at Ascog Farm.

Attempting to harness the average 8m/sec windspeeds, an application for wind turbines at the farm was lodged in 2013.

The whole process was somewhat fraught, failed at planning, and has been detailed at length on Adrian’s Ascog Farm website.

The family now concentrate on sheep-farming operations, including the production of excellent undyed wool and woollen garments.

Earlier, cattle and sheep farming at Ascog led to the partial development of the database-driven HerdManager website, an application that probably could have grown much bigger with more time invested in it.

Further details of the Ascog Farm and HerdManager websites are given below.
- Ascog Farm
  
  Adrian’s family own Ascog Farm on the Isle of Bute, Scotland. The farm is one of very few that is not owned by the Mount Stuart Trust, the ‘Bute Estate’ which describes itself as ‘the custodian of 87% of the Isle of Bute.’ At Ascog Farm, a particularly windy spot close to the Eastern coast…
- HerdManager
  
  Not the prettiest of sites, and more of a What might have been than anything else, HerdManager was partially developed as a demonstration of the sort of data management that is possible with a ColdFusion-based site, a database and a whole lot of Structured Query Language (SQL) statements. The functionality to add new records to…
Ascog Farm now uses Agriwebb for flock management, in many ways a competing product to our earlier self-built efforts.

Agriwebb raised $14 million in Series A funding so perhaps we should have put more time in to HerdManager!

The farm itself is unlikely ever to make millions but is a beautiful place to spend time, especially if the weather is kind…
June 26, 2025
MegaSorcery Limited
B2B, MegaSorcery Limited, Operated

Adrian founded MegaSorcery Limited on 11 December 2007, having exited Allegran Limited earlier that year following its acquisition by a major UK newspaper publisher in an eight figure deal.

The new consultancy company was designed to charge out Adrian’s time advising businesses in the high technology sector. Clients included IQ Capital, Ordnance Survey and Trucost.
- MegaSorcery
  
  Adrian developed the MegaSorcery website when he ran MegaSorcery Limited, the consultancy company he established in late 2007, soon after leaving Allegran Limited. In many ways the MegaSorcery site is a precursor to this website, just without the Research and Teaching strands, which had not yet been developed! Several of the websites listed on the…
- Tyres
  
  The Tyres website is another example of a What might have been concept. The intention, never fully developed in 2008, was to build a B2C website selling car tyres. Behind the scenes, after inputting a tyre size (e.g., 1955517V) the site found prices from a number of suppliers and selected the best value products. The…
The business operated for a number of years before a change of focus towards farming and renewable energy development at Ascog Farm on the Isle of Bute and the pursuit of a PhD in Geography and Computational Social Science at the University of Portsmouth.

Several of the projects listed on the old MegaSorcery site have now been restored on this website.

MegaSorcery Limited was dissolved in 2011 when Adrian’s PhD research started to take priority.

The company name, by the way, comes from a misheard lyric from On the Strength by Wu Tang Clan members Killa Beez.
June 25, 2025
GoCarbonFree Limited
B2C, GoCarbonFree Limited, Operated

Initially incorporated in February 2005 as Allegran Advertising Limited the company changed its name to Vivid Medianet Limited in March 2006 before adopting the name GoCarbonFree Limited a year later. As the core online dating business of Allegran Limited became massively successful this spin-off was designed to experiment with other concepts, none of which, unfortunately, ever established full commercial take-off.

Interesting projects undertaken by the company included the HomeHunter (later rechristened QpHomes)and GoCarbonFree websites.
- HomeHunter
  
  Allegran Advertising Limited was spun out of Allegran Limited in February 2005. The new company was designed to explore non-core business and one of the first concepts to emerge from this development was HomeHunter, soon rechristened QpHomes. Adrian was always rather keep on the HomeHunter concept and created most of the database architecture and programming…
- GoCarbonFree
  
  The GoCarbonFree website was an interesting concept designed to incentivise consumers to spend through the site – on a wide range of products including books, fashion, computers, games, health, mobile phones etc. – with rewards in carbon credit points, which could be used to buy and ‘retire’ Gold Standard Carbon Credits or Second Period European…
Despite pursuing some interesting avenues none of the B2C websites created by GoCarbonFree Limited under its differently named incarnations ever achieved commercial success.

Adrian resigned as a Director of the company in December 2007 and, although it limped along for another few years the whole show was closed down in 2012.

Soon after ceasing his involvement with GoCarbonFree, Adrian set up his consultancy business, MegaSorcery Limited, later embarking upon a PhD in Geography and Computational Social Science at the University of Portsmouth all while attempting to gain planning permission to build three wind turbines at Ascog Farm on the Isle of Bute.

Despite their inventiveness the outputs of GoCarbonFree Limited, in its various guises, sadly remain firmly in the What might have been category…
June 24, 2025
Lead Hat Limited
B2B, First Virtual Group plc, Lead Hat Limited, Operated

Founded by Adrian Marshall in 2000 and 20% owned by FirstVirtual Group plc, Lead Hat Limited started offering database-driven web development services in 2000, just a few months before the ‘dot com crash’ of March to October that year partially wiped out demand for its services.

Lead Hat Limited was a full service Internet agency providing everything from server hosting through to brand management, system design and implementation.

Despite the ‘dot com crash’ Lead Hat picked up some good clients and had notable success with the 2001 UK General Election website, a fine arts auction website and a database-driven website for film distributors Wild Bunch.
- UK General Election – 2001
  
  The 2001 United Kingdom General Election was held on Thursday 7 June 2001. Having produced a ground-breaking website for the 1997 UK General Election, Adrian and his colleagues were keen to repeat the exercise for 2001. Some of the data from 1997 could be re-used in the 2001 website, e.g., to calculate swings, while a…
- LeadHat
  
  Lead Hat Limited offered Internet and Web consultancy, design, hosting and web applications development. 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. With a strong technical offering, Lead Hat offered a number of computing technologies for…
In 2002, having had a lean time in the web development services business, Adrian Tear and Tony Sellen abandoned this sector in favour of developing consumer websites of their own.

The new business, Allegran Limited – founded in 2002, went on to develop lottery, dating and property websites. It was sold to Daily Mail General Holdings three years later in an eight figure deal.
June 22, 2025
First Virtual Group plc
B2B, First Virtual Group plc, Operated

Following their exit from Business Geographics Limited in 2000 Adrian Tear and Tony Sellen went on to co-found FirstVirtual Group plc.

FirstVirtual Group aimed to be a ‘technical incubator’ taking shareholding in exchange for development work; sweat for equity.

The ‘plc’ (Public Limited Company) in the company name sounded grand but wasn’t. The company was not listed on any stock exchange and, at the time, it was much easier to establish a plc at Companies House, even though the filing requirements were more onerous.
- First Virtual
  
  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…
- LeadHat
  
  Lead Hat Limited offered Internet and Web consultancy, design, hosting and web applications development. 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. With a strong technical offering, Lead Hat offered a number of computing technologies for…
- ExactMedia
  
  ExactMedia Limited was co-founded in 2000 with the involvement of Adrian Tear and Tony Sellen – through their incubator, First Virtual Group plc – and others in the media, public relations and Internet industries. At the dawn of targeted advertising on the Web, ExactMedia incentivised consumers to complete demographic and interests questionnaires while providing a…
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 websites for themselves.

The new business, Allegran Limited – founded in 2002, went on to develop lottery, dating and property websites. It was sold to Daily Mail General Holdings three years later in an eight figure deal.
June 21, 2025