Chris Young

I have been involved in the internet since 1996 before which I had a career at various software houses starting as an operator and working my way through various positions from Programmer through to Project Manager.
As soon as I had started on the managerial path I decided that it wasn’t for me and that I wanted to carry on using my programming skills to create software so I moved to a cushy end-user company local to my house and started to develop some of my own software in the spare time the new job afforded me.

In 1996 I started a Y2K business with Simon Snelling, whom I had met at SSA. I had written some conversion tools for the millennium date problem and Simon looked after business development.
In order to promote the software l created a simple website and then started to learn about SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). Back in those days you could create a page, submit it to Alta Vista and know how well it would rank in minutes!

The Y2K business became very successful due to the fact that other Y2K companies found our product via the search engines and contacted us to integrate our product with theirs.

After 2000 Simon and I decided to try out a few new business ideas, many of which failed, until I came across affiliate marketing. By this time Simon had taken a full time job at Deloitte so I concentrated on developing affiliate based websites as a one man band.

After doing OK with some US sites the UK market started to pick up and I launched CompareStorePrices.co.uk.

In the meantime Simon went on to start the hugely successful Search Sciences and has also now partnered with Kieron Donoghue to form Content Now.

The rest, as they say, is history!

Nigel Frith

I will do my best not to be boring… here goes:

To summarise what I am good at in one phrase would be: “make stuff happen” – I am at my best when taking an idea from concept to reality and ideally profitable revenue generation (and managing everything involved in between) with minimum budget and resources.

I hold the newly formed position of COO for CompareStorePrices (CSP). My main job is two fold:

1) Help develop CSP

2) Help develop new sites and business concepts funded through CSP

I joined ValueClick to build the European Search123 (Search123.uk.com) pay per click platform and syndication business. The business started as a bare shell and between myself and a small and highly competent team, we built a very successful unit that now has a T/O over £12m per year (as of Jan 2009).

I have a good understanding of Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimisation and Internet Marketing in general. This is from both the advertisers and publishers perspective. I have managed large online budgets… with profitable returns. (It’s easy to spend it… harder to make it ) but I have also lost money,  so cannot claim to get it right all the time. I have learned the quickest and easiest way to make £1m though… start with £2m!

I have been very involved with affiliate marketing through ValueClick (via CJ.com) and have a sound grasp of how it works and its benefits as both publishers and advertisers.

I have set up and run two private companies and understand what it means to take the ultimate business risk of spending ones own cash.