I am a businessman with over 20 years’ experience of starting, building and selling businesses.

Prior to this I left school at the age of 16 and started my career working within advertising sales for The Hendon Times Newspaper Group in North West London, a regional division of Pearson’s (Westminster Press) I was a pretty good at sales and quickly progressed into middle management.   

In 1994 I was head hunted by the Peterborough Evening Telegraph and moved my family to Peterborough. Nine weeks after my new job, I was made redundant, the Telegraph had a major restructure, and as the last one in I was the first one out. Despite being offered to opportunity to move back to London, I decided to stick with Peterborough and fortunately secured a role working EMAP consumer magazines (now Bauer). Despite being reasonably successful in the corporate world, I had always craved to work for myself and wanted more for myself and my family. I had the self-confidence and determination to succeed on my own, and like many entrepreneurs I was prepared to take the risk.

My journey as a business owner started at the turn of the century. I set up a business called Advantage Plus, an agency that would help companies with their advertising and marketing, this included very basic websites.  I loved every minute working for myself, and I knew there was no turning back. It was during these early days that I began to help my clients with early-stage websites, which I very quickly learned that technology was the future. I also secured my first major contract, which was to redesign and monetise the Jessops Photography Catalogue. One of the markets I worked whilst at EMAP was photography and I convinced them to let me sell advertising and sponsorship into their bi-annual catalogue. We agreed that I would take a percentage of the revenue, it was resounding success for Jessops and my new business. The model was so successful that I approached Thomas Cook to see if they would be interested to monetise their travel brochures, they were interested but alas that did not come to fruition, could have been huge! 

In 2000 an opportunity emerged that changed my career forever. I was approached by my daughter’s primary school to create them a website, and like virtually every school, they did not have one. I worked together with a fellow parent and the school loved the website. This resulted in us being approached by dozens of schools in the Peterborough, Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire. We also developed an Intranet for Peterborough Education Department; it was known as “The Learning City” and acted as the main communication highway for teachers and staff across the City. Over the next 20 years, my team and I built e4education to be one of the leading providers of school websites and communication tools. At the point I sold in 2021 the company employed over 50 talented people and worked with almost three thousand schools. We had created a fantastic culture and built a reputation for quality, value and integrity. I am very proud to have been the leader of an amazing company with brilliant people.

Since the sale of e4education to Juniper Education, I have become part owner of a well-established and successful recruitment business called Anne Corder Recruitment and I am also Chairman of a very exciting start-up called Sixty Learn. I also work with business owners offering advice, mentoring, board membership, and in some cases investment.