Were you Moonfruits or fruit cakes giving up good jobs for a dot.com? We definitely think we are Moonfruiters not fruitcakes! Even though it has been a rollercoaster trip there is a great sense of adventure in the company. A period like this in any economy will sort the wheat from the chaff and Moonfruit is wheat!
Has the business changed? We had to execute the second phase much more quickly to secure a revenue stream and cost base to break even this year. We had trailed the first online site building software from January 2000 to prove how easy it was. Armed with the response fromconsumers and requests from portals and ISPs to licence it, we turned the business on a sixpence and extended our first application to support an ASP (Application Service Provider) model -Moonfruit II, a multi-media web building application for non-techie users we are now licensing.
Where is the dot.com world going? As with any industry there are large numbers of entrants followed by a shake down.We have had to restructure the business twice in one year. It was hard making positions redundant, while recruiting new skill sets. New businesses will learn from predecessors' mistakes.
What should the government do? The best thing is to nurture the new technology infrastructure within the UK - making good their promises for school and public sector networks, roll out of DSL lines, and encourage investment for R&D.
Why aren't there more women? Partly time and partly the need for women to be pro-active at all ages.There are more in the USA and Asia where it has long been acceptable for girls to excel in science. Women are good at business and at management. We have fast rising good women managers. We have a woman of 59 who is our mentor. Far fewer women than men enter into technology at university. This leads to fewer women in IT. The perception of most young women is that the internet is "geeky". This will change. Most networking events are male dominated despite a few notable exceptions.
Whither the web post-Napster? Charging is inevitable but everyone is waiting for the first person to jump. We have already integrated a charging mechanism into our application. The basic philosophy of the net will keep it free but to support this there will have to be elements where charging is possible.
Your introduction to computers? Sitting with my dad, playing with punch cards! He was in a lab while he was studying computer science in 1974 (my mother is a data warehousing consultant). Computers and the net are second nature. It was to make this accessible to the public that made me decide on Moonfruit.
Favourite sites? www.google.com (great search engine) and www.streetmaps.co.uk! www.shockwave.com is great for games and music and www.tvgohome.com for rude satire.
Must-have gadgets? My mobile is at the top, followed by my Yves Saint Laurent, Touche Eclat (it's got a cool clicky action).
