Dan Wagner

Dan Wagner
File:Danwagner2.jpg
Born	Dan Wagner (1963-07-28) 28 July 1963 Edgware, Middlesex, England
Nationality	British
Occupation	Businessman
Known for	MAID, Venda Inc

Dan Wagner (born 28 July 1963) is an English entrepreneur and businessman. He was one of the first British-based Internet entrepreneurs, having founded M.A.I.D (Marketing Analysis & Information Database) in 1984, a company which provided online information services. It made over 200,000 publications available from 192 countries.

He was educated at Merchant Taylors' School, Northwood and University College School, London. After briefly joining Richer Sounds as a salesman he went to work for WCRS advertising in 1981. In 1984, Wagner founded MAID (Market Analysis and Information Database) which was one of the first online information repositories and Wagner as CEO was responsible for its development and growth, building it from zero to 26% of the global on-line information market.

In addition to being a renowned serial entrepreneur he is also regarded as an extraordinary salesman.

Biography

Wagner was born in Edgware, Middlesex. He is the youngest of two children of John and Yaffa Wagner, who was a motor industry businessman predominantly running the UK operations of BMW, Volkswagen and Volvo as Chief Executive.

Personal life

Wagner met his wife Susan when he was 27 whilst on a business trip to Japan. She was a fashion model with Elite Model Management and had been working in Tokyo at the time. They married on 2 August 1998, have two children, and live in Belsize Park, London.

Dan is an inveterate Arsenal fan.

Ventures

MAID/Dialog

Wagner founded the online information company MAID in 1984, the name being an acronym of - Market Analysis Information Database.

By 1985, the first version of the online service was available to customers. By providing a simple menu interface providing access to an aggregation of some of the best known market research publishers and trade publications in the UK, Wagner was able to provide customers with the ability to interrogate them all simultaneously via a computer and a telephone line. At the time, online services were in their infancy (as was the personal computer) and as a result the service was delivered at a speed of 3 kbs (typical broadband speeds today are 700 kbs).

Because the UK market was embryonic, Wagner relocated to New York City in January 1986 by taking an apartment on the Upper West Side and using it both as accommodation for him and three of his staff as well as the main office for MAID in the USA. By July 1991, MAID relocated its offices from South Park Tower to Park Avenue South.

In 1992, as business grew in Europe, an office in Paris was opened at 10 Rue de Presbourg and in November 1993, an office was opened on the West Coast of America in Los Angeles.

In 1994, MAID was listed on the London Stock Exchange and in 1995 floated on NASDAQ . During the 1990s, MAID more doubled its market value every year as a result of fast sales growth and numerous strategic alliances starting with a deal in 1995 with Microsoft to provide much of the content for their online service MSN . This was followed by distribution deals with CompuServe, IBM and BT .

During this time, Wagner was also actively involved in the development of the UK internet service provision market funding the development of UK Internet Service provider Easynet and pioneering internet access through television by developing technology within MAID that was licensed to hotel groups Forte and Granada .

In November 1997, Wagner engineered the reverse acquisition of Knight Ridder Information which owned many international professional databases including Dialog Information Services in the United States and DataStar in Europe . He managed the integration of the MAID business into Dialog, migrated the existing Dialog databases and professional information solutions to the Internet.

MAID, under Wagner’s direction, was also active in funding and developing concept based information retrieval technologies to assist customers in searching the growing archives of information stored in now three data centres around the world. In 1997, Wagner acquired the Muscat search engine which was devised by Dr Martin Porter from research performed by at Cambridge University and was commercialized in 1984 by Cambridge CD Publishing. Dr. Porter is widely recognised for having created the Porter Stemming Algorithm which became the de-facto standard algorithm used for English stemming. Porter joined MAID and headed up the development and research into new search algorithms.

In 1997, Wagner gained a deal to license search technology (InfoSort) to Fujitsu of Japan which was hailed by Prime Minister Tony Blair as "a significant and very welcome development in Anglo-Japanese trading relations" .

In 2000, he sold Dialog’s Information Services Division to The Thomson Corporation of Canada retaining certain assets made up from search, eCommerce and internet through TV technologies and renamed the new entity Bright Station PLC.

Bright Station

Bright Station is Dan Wagner’s personal vehicle for the creation of his businesses and is essentially an Internet and eCommerce focused technology holding company. In May 2000, he acquired the assets of failed fashion 'retailer' Boo.com and absorbed them into Bright Station. In April 2001, Wagner took Bright Station private from the LSE and NASDAQ and spun out its two direct investment activities; Venda Inc and Locayta, both of which provide solutions delivered to customers as rented services but managed and operated centrally. This approach to technology services is known as Software as a service or SaaS.

Bright Station Ventures was set up 2007 in partnership with serial entrepreneur Sháá Wasmund to nurture new web opportunities that they created.

Venda

Venda is an on-demand, software-as-a-service platform delivering eCommerce and multi-channel retail solutions to customers worldwide. Wagner devised the concept for Venda in 1998 as a subsidiary of MAID and funded the research into creating the world’s first shared platform for eCommerce.

Venda is now the global market leader in SaaS eCommerce and runs the eCommerce solutions for hundreds of the world’s leading manufacturers and retailers including Panasonic, Laura Ashley, TK Maxx, Tesco, the British Museum, BBC, France Telecom, Universal Music Group, JVC, Condé Nast and many others.

In December 2007, following the appointment of Eric Abensur as Group Chief Executive of Venda (from France Telecom’s Orange subsidiary), Wagner was rumoured to be planning a return to the public markets with Venda.

Locayta

Locayta is Wagner’s Software-as-a-service search and web solutions business. Locayta has at its heart a sophisticated suite of search, recommendation and merchandising technologies that have been deployed for customers in a variety of ways. All Venda eCommerce sites use Locayta search technologies for retrieval of products and for intuitive navigation. In addition, BT uses Locayta to operate its online telephone directories and Nectar uses Locayta technology to operate their comparison shopping site.

Aigua Media Group

Aigua Media Group was launched in 2009 following the consolidation of three separate Bright Station Ventures businesses – Osoyou.com (launched in 2007), Aigua Media Blogs (launched in 2006) and The Beauty Quest (launched in 2009). The publishing group owns leading fashion blogs (including Catwalk Queen, Shoewawa, Bag Lady, Kiss and Make Up and others), together with pioneering social shopping networks Osoyou.com and The Beauty Quest. Today, Aigua Media represents the largest female web readership in the UK (over 1.25 million nique visitors per month as at January 2010).

Smarta

Smarta is a social network for businesses and entrepreneurs. It provides information from lawyers, accountants and other industry experts as well as videos and insight from successful entrepreneurs. Theo Paphitis and Deborah Meaden sit on the board of Smarta which is chaired by Sir Richard Needham. Smarta received investment from Bebo founders Michael and Xochi Birch.

Smarta has been sponsored by RBS, Intuit and Vodafone as well as support from Mishcon de Reya, Business Environment and the Government.

Honours

Wagner was chosen by the World Economic Forum as a Global Leader of Tomorrow in 1997, and awarded Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year 1998.

Profiles

• The Andrew Davidson Interview - Dan Wagner
• What an earth is Dan Wagner up to now

Further reading

• Andrew Davidson, "Smart Luck & the seven other qualities of great entrepreneurs" (2002), paperback ISBN 0-273-65265-6.
• Ernst Malmsten, Erik Portanger, Charles Drazin, "Boo Hoo: A Dot Com Story" (2002), paperback ISBN 0-099-41837-1

External links

• Portrait of Dan Wagner
• On the web and on the walls
• Wagner joins board of Reward

External links

• Bright Station Website
• Venda Website
• Locayta Website
• Aigua Media Website
• Smarta website