ANDREW MICHAEL

Networth – $84.6 million

Andrew Michael, 26, who founded Fasthosts in 1999. Now Mr. Michael from Cheltenham,  who owns a 75% share in the company, has sold Fasthosts for £61.5m. It grew rapidly in size and strength to become a dominant player in the budget UK web hosting market.

The company was founded by Andrew Michael. In 2007, Andrew sold fast host to a German ISP  for over $120 million.

Today, Andrew is the founder and CEO of Livedrive. Livedrive already partners with a number of leading companies in the U.K., including DSGi, Britain’s leading electronics retailer.

Andrew reportedly made $46m from the sale of fasthosts, the small business internet hosting company he founded ten years ago.

Since then he has become a bit of a celebrity on the social scene and as mentioned above, he has now started up a new storage company called Livedrive which stores your data in a Livewire facility giving you internet access, and can also keep local copies on your PC or notebook, caching them, so you can work offline as well as online.

You can watch the interview about fasthosts services done with Steve Holford, who is now the Chief Marketing officer.

Fasthosts was set up as an A-level project by Mr. Michael and his friend Alex Wilding. After completing his A-levels Mr. Michael focused on his new business which in 2002 was listed by the Sunday Times as the second fastest growing technology company in the country. In 2005 the company boasted a turnover of £20m with profits of £5m.

Andrew has always had the dream of owning a helicopter. Well, his dream finally came true! (see picture above)

Concerning Fasthosts these are Andrew’s words:

I always had very high hopes for the company… and I’m ambitious so I wanted Fasthosts to succeed.”

Today, Andrew is all about livedrive. It is his new project, and he is excited and focused on building this business. He has even turned down a £100 million offer to buy his livedrive business.

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Starting and Running an Online Business for Dummies (For Dummies)