I’m a programmer who learned his stuff on Acorn’s BBC and Archimedes computers through the 1990s. My first proper job was adding features to the PC emulator that graced the last versions of Acorn’s brilliant RISC OS, which we’d all be using right now if you could turn Microsoft-bashing into a decent OS.

While studying Classics & Computer Science at King’s College, I also completed a reading of the entire internet, which was completely possible for one person in 1999.

I started Bytemark as a hosting firm with my friend Peter when we realised that VMWare was the only way people were selling proper VPSes, and it cost a fortune. Our knowledge of Linux, Ruby & free software meant we could undercut everyone and build up hosting solutions for a lot less money, and there was a plentiful supply of customers fleeing really terrible hosting companies who championed us in the early days.

My company is now building BigV, a new cloud hosting platform that I designed to be much better than every other hosting product. I am close to achieving scientific proof of this. After 10 years Bytemark also owns its own data centre in York.

I still program where I’m allowed, but mostly spend my day writing or talking to the interesting people who work at, or buy from, Bytemark.