Adrian Tear

Category: Codesign

  • MegaSorcery

    MegaSorcery

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    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 What We Do page of MegaSorcery are now live on the Websites page of adriantear.com.

    The site also listed a few projects, including work with Ordnance Survey and UCL on strategising OS’ future direction, and database and web systems consultancy with Trucost, since acquired by S&P Dow Jones Indices for over £14 million.

    If you are interested in working with Adrian on a consultancy project please get in touch.

  • LeadHat

    LeadHat

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    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 website development, including:

    • ColdFusion
    • Microsoft Active Server Pages
    • PHP
    • Microsoft SQL Server
    • MySQL
    • Oracle
    • C, C++

    Owned 20% by FirstVirtual Group plc the company started offering 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.

    Despite the ‘dot com crash’ Lead Hat picked up some good clients and had notable success with:

    • 2001 UK General Election – A website developed in partnership with the Daily Telegraph newspaper to cover the UK General Election of that year.
    • Wild Bunch – A website and content management system for the film distribution company.

    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.

  • First Virtual

    First Virtual

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    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.