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How sci-fi site became reality

from Cathy (cathyvpreece@aol.com)

NATIONAL NEWS: How sci-fi site became reality

By Chris Nuttall

Financial Times

Sep 01, 2003

Dotcom survivor Mark Rogers set up Mallarkey.com - a sci-fi trading community site - in January and the site has been live only for the past couple of months.

Mr Rogers says the process was very different to that of the bubble years.

"I worked for Amazon.com at the height of the bubble, then at Citikey [the wireless city guide], which managed to spend about $11.5m in nine months, and then the bailiffs came in. That was kind of an interesting and inspiring experience -I thought I can't do it any worse than that."

From there he moved to a Silicon Valley company but left when it was taken over.

When he subsequently set up Mallarkey.com, with people he knew from Amazon and the BBC, he knew he did not want to go down the venture capital route. Instead, the business accepted £100,000 from angel investors.

"It's a much saner market place now, more boring," he says. The business is at the top of a big house in Kennington, south London, and Mr Rogers has no plans to move on for several years.

"We are going to have to be a lot bigger before I take on any extensive lease in a glamorous loft," he says.

"For a long time, one of the key people I was working with did actually sleep in our spare room, but in general people come in and work and then leave at night. A company like mine has to start the way all companies start - you work hard, you do a lot of planning - that was cut out during the bubble."

Mr Rogers describes the business as a "tiny" concern with just five staff.

"Jeff Bezos [the Amazon founder] always says it's still only day one on the internet - I think it's day two, or just about to be. Clever marketing ideas will characterise day two. These were singularly lacking in the bubble years. Labour is cheaper and people have learnt a lot. Now is the time to set up a new company."

Find this article at:
http://search.ft.com/s03/search/article.html?id=030901000750

(posted 7514 days ago)

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