FIRST VIRTUAL GROUP PLC

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

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

The 'dot com crash' of March to October 2000 didn't exactly help things 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 the Daily Mail General Trust three years later in an eight figure deal.