April 1996 to April 26, 2009:

It may not be blog netiquette but it's not my idea and therefore a short recap may be necessary.

I started a company, bought businesses, grew businesses, sold businesses, a lot of s*** happened in that time, the end. Next.

Actually, that is grossly unfair to the wonderful people who worked with me then and still do now. I did start my company in April 1996 by acquiring two struggling magazines; Image & Data Manager (IDM) and Australian Exhibitor. IDM became very successful, and remains one of the few independent IT publications in Australia (it started in 1994). And my, we've seen some casualties in that time. It's now in the hands of good mate and publisher, Bill Dawes (Transmit Media). On the other hand, I stopped publishing the exhibition industry magazine within a year. Win one, lose one.

The next score for my company was licensing Internet World from Mecklermedia and publishing it in Australia. That went well until Alan Meckler cashed out in the dot com boom. So that was Lesson #2. (Sidebar: I never really planned to start a company, it was just circumstance. Lesson #1 was working very hard on an Australian film industry magazine called Encore, only for it to be sold by the Australian owners to a British conglomerate that I had previously worked for seven years earlier. After 15 years, I ended up in the same place I started, a complete career loop. I lasted two months under new ownership and thought, "I may as well have a crack myself".)

As a keen cyclist, I also watched this web site called Cyclingnews.com grow by word-of-mouth. It was published by an Australian, Bill Mitchell. In August 1999 I approached Bill, hoping he'd want to sell as I assumed he had better things to do with his time (he is a Professor of Economics at the University of Newcastle) and that his hobby had quickly turned into a monster. Good timing. Bill agreed to sell it to me. You can read more about it here and here.

After about eight fun-filled (!?) years I sold this business on July 3, 2007, to Future Publishing of the UK. I also provided the readers with further detail about the sale as I stayed on as the 'managing consultant' for 18 months after the deal went through. As a sidebar, I learned - during a transnational flight - that July 3 is the same date that Danny Ocean (George Clooney) and his pals carry off their sting in Oceans 13. I did not know that at the time, but it's just a coincidence. Future largely kept the team together - as agreed - and CN stayed the numero uno cycling website in the world.