Tech Business History

by Charles Miller · · ·

TBH explores how tech businesses got started, how they succeeded or failed and what it was like to work in them. Presenter Charles Miller is a former BBC producer who specialised in documentaries about technology and business. In TBH he continues his research, meeting key people whose stories tell us how technology found its way into our lives. In this first series, he talks to those behind the dot com boom and bust in the UK in the late 1990s.

Sally Robinson and her husband ran their farm in Yorkshire, along with a small bed and breakfast business that Sally looked after. When Sally heard about the Internet in 1999, she realised it could provide an opportunity to further diversify the farming business. She converted a couple of the outhouses into offices and Amplebosom.com was born - providing lingerie for "the larger lady", as Sally puts it. Twenty years on, Amplebosom is still going strong, whilst conforming to none of the dot com stereotypes. It's been profitable from the start, has never borrowed large amounts of money - and Sally …

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Sally Robinson and her husband ran their farm in Yorkshire, along with a small bed and breakfast business that Sally looked after. When Sally heard about the Internet in 1999, she realised it could provide an opportunity to further diversify the far...
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Toby Rowland was the co-founder of one of Britain's best-known dot com startups - a health site called Clickmango. He and his partner had no trouble raising £3 million, or spending it as fast as they could, at the urging of their investors, in a yea...
Toby Rowland was the co-founder of one of Britain's best-known dot com startups - a health site called Clickmango. He and his partner had no trouble raising £3 million, or spending it as fast as they could, at the urging of their investors, in a year and a half. They …
Eva Pascoe came to London from her native Poland to study human-computer interaction and psychology. In 1994, she founded Cyberia, possibly the world's first Internet cafe, which was described by Wired magazine as “the most fashionable cafe in '90s ...
Eva Pascoe came to London from her native Poland to study human-computer interaction and psychology. In 1994, she founded Cyberia, possibly the world's first Internet cafe, which was described by Wired magazine as “the most fashionable cafe in '90s London”. Backed by Mick Jagger, and visited, unexpectedly, by Bill Gates, …
As a BBC journalist, Rory-Cellan Jones witnessed the brief dot com boom in the UK, followed by the bust. Among the big stories, he covered the birth of Freeserve, Lastminute, Firebox and Clickmango - many of them headed by relatively privileged youn...
As a BBC journalist, Rory-Cellan Jones witnessed the brief dot com boom in the UK, followed by the bust. Among the big stories, he covered the birth of Freeserve, Lastminute, Firebox and Clickmango - many of them headed by relatively privileged young people who'd come from Oxbridge or business school. …
This week's guest started an online bookshop that was probably the first in the world. He’s not Jeff Bezos but he is, arguably, Britain’s answer to the founder of Amazon. He’s Darryl Mattocks and he was selling books online in 1994 - a year ahead of...
This week's guest started an online bookshop that was probably the first in the world. He’s not Jeff Bezos but he is, arguably, Britain’s answer to the founder of Amazon. He’s Darryl Mattocks and he was selling books online in 1994 - a year ahead of Amazon. In fact Mr …