Dan Wagner
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One of the first British-based Internet entrepreneur having founded M.A.I.D in 1984 which became the world leader in providing online information services licensing, aggregating and making available for interrogation over 200,000 publications from 192 countries. He was educated at Merchant Taylors' School, Northwood, Middlesex and University College School, London, England between 1976 and 1979 before leaving to briefly join Richer Sounds as a salesman and then WCRS advertising in 1981. In 1984, Mr. Wagner left to set up one of the first online information repositories and was responsible for the development, growth, strategy and sales of the business building it from zero to capture over 3.5% of the on-line data market against fierce (and well funded) competitors including Reuters, Dow Jones, Pearson, Lockheed, Knight Ridder and Reed Elsevier. Major clients included over 50% of the Fortune 1000 companies.
Through a planned acquisition of the largest competitor became the CEO of the global leader in the provision of managed corporate data and content to over 20,000 corporations worldwide and over 1 million users (Sales $300 million, 1,400 employees). Managed the successful integration of the MAID business into Dialog including streamlining the business by stripping out 33% of the combined cost base within the first 3 months. Merged two very different corporate cultures, migrated the existing Dialog databases and professional information solutions to the Internet and turned a loss making business into a profitable market leader with a 25% share and EBITDA of $63 million.
Responsible for personally brokering the ground breaking deal to license Dialog technology (InfoSort) to Fujitsu of Japan hailed by UK Prime Minister Tony Blair as a major milestone in UK/Japanese trade relations. Many other strategic alliances forged over the company’s history including: IBM, Microsoft, Netscape, Nokia, British Telecom, Alta Vista, AOL / Compuserve where partner companies relied upon electronic content provision by MAID/Dialog. (E.g. MAID/Dialog provides all newspaper archives on AOL/CompuServe).
In 2000 achieved the successful disposal of the Information Services Division to The Thomson Corporation of Canada allowing the creation of Bright Station plc – an Internet and eCommerce focused technology holding company and incubator. In May 2000, acquired the assets of failed fashion 'etailer' Boo.com and absorbed them into Bright Station. In April 2001, Dan Wagner took Bright Station private from the LSE and NASDAQ and now trades as a private company with two direct investment activities; Venda and Locayta, both of which provide software as services (SaaS) - rented to customers but managed and operated centrally.
Chosen by the World Economic Forum as a Global Leader of Tomorrow in 1997 Ernst and Young ‘Turnaround’ Entrepreneur of the Year 1998 for Dialog
