Interview - Laying Demon to rest

Cliff Stanford may not be working 24-hour days anymore but he's stillny, Cliff Stanford is risking nearly half of his fortune on other peoples' ideas. a busy man. Our interview is interrupted twice by phone calls, which he quickly deals with by dispatching a few curt rebuffs.

The former MD and founder of Demon Internet should, by all rights, be taking it easy. The #33m he made, on the sale of Demon to Scottish Telecom last May, means he never has to work again. But you get the feeling that whatever hunger drives him, he will not be satisfied by cash alone.

What he seems to relish more than the money itself is the freedom it gives him. Freedom to foster the maverick reputation he has acquired in the industry as the man who says what he thinks, the man who takes risks, the man who bought a pink Rolls Royce to celebrate his first million.

The money has also given him the freedom to unleash his latest venture on the world - Redbus, launched a week after the Demon sale. The raison d'etre of the firm is to invest in and support new ideas and talent from any sector.

In its first six months, the firm received ideas from around 800 companies, 200 of which it has decided to back. Stanford claims Redbus is his chance to put something back, but admits - true to form - that he plans to get a substantial return on his investment.

NN: You say that you want to be remembered for bringing cheap internet access to the UK. But how do you respond to the criticism that Demon's #10 a month pricing policy made it so difficult to compete that it slowed the development of the UK internet infrastructure and led to present speed and reliability problems?

I should answer that with one word. Bollocks. It's absolute nonsense, to put something back in was very important in the early days and to a great extent we put a lot more back than anyone else. But on the other hand we took a lot more out. We made the UK one of the leading sites for dial-up access, we set a price point which was very important. The UK is still one of the cheapest places in the world for quality dial-up access.

NN: You have been very critical of CompuServe in the past. What exactly is your problem with it?

CompuServe just hasn't moved forward. I'm amazed that it has done as well as it has. But the real one that astonishes me is AOL. How the hell they managed to grow and are valued at 200 times revenue, I have no idea.

They just managed to get a web browser in when everyone else has had a web browser for years.

NN: They must be doing something right?

As you say, they must be, but I can't see what it is. I don't think anyone else can see what it is. I think it's marketing rather than technology though. One thing they have got right is their quality of service. It doesn't have to be consistently excellent, it just has to be consistent.

This is something it took us a long time to learn at Demon. Even consistently poor will do if you can get expectations set at that level.

NN: Do you feel that the internet is still developing in the right direction now that you're out of it?

It's always been moving in the wrong direction and the right direction.

It is moving in the right direction in that virtually every computer in the country is connected in one way or another. The vision from now on is being able to access your washing machine or program your video recorder from any computer. I still think that is where we'll end up. Interconnected networking. I don't know why no one's done it yet - it's trivial.

NN: You've got the resources and expertise, why don't you do it?

I don't want to do it. I want to help other people do it. It does annoy me that people don't come up with obvious ideas. I could go back to working 24-hour days as I was at the beginning or 18 -hour days as I was at the end. But funnily enough, being hungry makes you want to do these things a lot more than having money in the bank.

NN: Exactly how much risk are you prepared to take with Redbus?

It is an all-risk business. I sold Demon Internet and ended up with around #30m. It was too much, but how could I use it to its best advantage to help as many people as possible?

I came to the conclusion that there was a gap for risky seed capital.

I took #15m and said the rest is risk capital - if I lose it, I lose it.

I don't intend to lose it mind you, I intend to make it grow.

NN: What sort of response, in terms of people sending in ideas, have you had so far?

We have a lot of ideas sent in but the funny thing is I expected to see large numbers of hi-tech ideas and, probably because of timing, that hasn't happened. I can only think we are in a hiatus in new technology at the moment.

NN: Can you see any reason for this 'hiatus'?

Yes, the internet has become a lot more mature so there's not that much opportunity to come up with that whiz-bang new idea.

NN: If one of our readers has a whiz-bang idea for a tech company, what advice would you have?

Work out what the company does. What is the basic idea of getting from the idea to the cash? Then put that together in any form. We are not looking for strong business plans prepared by a team of accountants, we can do that for you. Bring it along and let's see if you can excite us. If you do, the money is there, and the money is there very quickly.

BOARDING THE REDBUS

Further information, including how to send in your business ideas and proposals, can be obtained from: ideas@redbus.co.uk.