My first career was as an architect with a small practice in central London. In the mid ‘80s I was able to retire in a modest way and by way of a retirement occupation, I thought I needed something that involved computers and travel but most of all, something you got paid for before you did it – bearing in mind the difficulty architects had and no doubt still have in collecting fees!

After mulling these requirements over for a couple of years, I developed a travel publication designed to help visitors from abroad, particularly the United States, find out in detail what was on in London in order to plan their visit before leaving home. Hard to believe in the electronic world of instant information we now live in, but back then even if you lived in New York or Los Angeles let alone the Midwest this kind of detail was almost impossible to find and actually booking a ticket relied on an expensive international phone call.

That particular publication, CityFile London, laser printed to order, was killed by the Gulf War of 1991 but the bones of the database eventually found its way to the internet as my first dabble online as cityeventsonline.com. At that time, most people thought the internet was mainly for sex perverts and would never be a serious business tool and most definitely nobody would ever put credit card details online.

But, I persevered and when I discovered that nobody was prepared to pay for information, I tried putting tickets for Madame Tussauds in London on sale – and to my amazement, 45 admissions were sold in the first month! The sales doubled the next month and I realised that here was the basis of a business.

The first years were the manual years, telephoning the credit card company for authorisations on every sale, then writing out credit card slips and banking them like cheques. Vouchers were set up in Word, reformatted as PDF files and sent by email. This was now 1999 and Print-n-Go! was born. It then took years of trying to understand how search engines worked, how to automate voucher production and online credit card payments and, of course, building up a credible product portfolio.

The website, 365tickets.com has now passed its seventh birthday and still going from strength to strength. Technology has moved us along at an amazing pace over the past seven years and look forward to at least as much innovation in the next seven!