Virtual Business of the Year Awards, 2010

Paul started his first internet business in 1999 and has never looked back.

The online entrepreneur is best known for co-founding social networking site Bebo, which was sold to AOL for $850m in 2008. BirthdayAlarm.com, photo-sharing network Ringo.com and the business networking service soflow.com are among his other ventures. Paul also recently joined the board of travel company Adventura.com and is helping to create new innovative travel products.

Paul is going back to his freelancing roots with another of his latest business interests – backing online accounting start-up Crunch.co.uk as a result of his own experiences as an IT contractor. He worked for himself for five years prior to becoming an internet entrepreneur.

Paul graduated from University many years ago, but now believes the University of Life has much more to offer than traditional education. Paul’s background is systems analysis and he has loved the internet since the first day he went online back in 1996.

Michael brings over 10 years experience in all aspects of internet advertising to AdJug.

He has an extensive background in general management, marketing, sales and product development both in small and large growth businesses and a deep knowledge of strategic marketing with regards to online marketplaces.

Before founding AdJug, Michael was the Managing Director of Gumtree.com, the UK's leading online classifieds site which was acquired by eBay in 2005. Michael took the company from break even to high margin profitability doubling annual revenues, users and traffic.

Prior to that Michael was eBay's Marketing Director in Germany for over three years, directly responsible for a 100+ million dollar annual marketing budget and managing, building a high-powered marketing team. During his tenure, eBay's reach in Germany grew from 6% to over 50%. Michael started out as eBay's Head of Categories in Germany in 2001.

Other positions included Managing Director of web startup urbia.com UK Ltd and Head of Interactive at Zippel Communications.

Michael holds a BA in Journalism from Cologne Journalism School and a Master of Business from Cologne University.

Darren is an experienced entrepreneur and business start-up consultant. His latest venture, Crunch.co.uk, is the UK’s first combined online accounting system and accounting practice. It’s aimed specifically at Freelancers, contractors and micro-businesses.

Over the past few months Crunch.co.uk has featured on Radio 2’s Drivetime show and won the ‘Innovation in Business’ accolade at the Brighton and Hove Business Awards (BAHBAs). High profile online entrepreneurs - Chairman of Skype Michael van Swaaij and co-Founder of Bebo Paul Birch - are investors in the company.

FreelanceAdvisor.co.uk was launched by Darren back in early 2008 as a sister site - an online advice and Job resource to help Freelancers network, set up and work more efficiently. FreelanceAdvisor.co.uk now has over 10,000 Freelancers reading articles on the site every month.

Prior to founding Crunch.co.uk, Darren built a top UK digital marketing agency from scratch and with no investment. Email marketing specialist Pure began life in 2001 when Darren saw a gap in the market and realised that email and SMS technology would become an essential business tool for brands. Fast forward eight years and Pure employs over 60 people and has over 2,000 Clients including innocent drinks, Financial Times and Rightmove. Darren took the company to the point of a multi-million dollar sale in 2008.

Along the way, Pure was named eleventh fastest growing new media company in the UK by investment bank GP Bullhound’s Media Momentum Top 50 2007 league table, and Best Small Business at the Sussex Business Awards 2006/07. Darren won Entrepreneur of the Year at the same ceremony in 2007/08, and also made the shortlist for 02 / Arena magazine’s Entrepreneur of the Year competition.

Opportunities are rarely missed and his favourite pastime is doing the seemingly impossible. In the case of Crunch.co.uk, he’s taken an old fashioned industry and turned it on its head; challenging the traditional business model.

Before starting Pure, Darren worked in advertising as E-commerce Director for Bates Australia. He was also a shareholder in online start-up Frontier, the internet services company, which was later sold to internet service provider Mistral.

Darren helps many other entrepreneurs for free and is passionate about the flourishing freelancing space. He helps people to start-up on their own by teaching them sales tactics to drum up business and ways to ensure continued success. He also speaks at seminars to help Freelancers and micro-businesses really make their companies work; ultimately helping them to fulfil their dreams and avoid being stuck in Jobs they dislike.

Doug Monro is currently Chief Operating Officer of Zoopla.co.uk, the UK's leading online property market resource offering users free information and tools to help them make better-informed property decisions. Zoopla! is a privately held company backed by well-respected angel investors and leading venture capital firms Atlas Venture and Octopus Ventures.

Prior to joining Zoopla!, Doug was Managing Director of Gumtree.com, the UK's largest classified ads site, where he built the team and business through a phenomenal period of growth after acquisition by eBay in 2005.

Previously, Doug has worked at eBay UK, Bain & Company, Unilever and also as an entrepreneur. Doug has a BA in English from Cambridge and an MBA from Kellogg where he was a Fulbright and Siebel scholar. He is also a CIMA-qualified accountant.

Doug got involved with PeoplePerHour.com as an investor and an advisor on operating and strategic issues.

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Pernille Bruun-Jensen is the Managing Director of Intuit UK, part of Intuit Inc., the leading provider of financial software and web-based services for consumers, small businesses and accounting professionals. Intuit’s QuickBooks software offers easy accounting for small businesses and helps simplify small business management, as well as VAT preparation and filing..

Pernille is committed to creating new, easier, and more effective ways for freelancers, consultants and small businesses to manage money in and out, giving back more time to live their lives and make their business successful.

Previously, Pernille has worked at Johnson & Johnson and Kraft Jacob’s Suchard in various global, regional and local management and marketing roles, nurturing and growing household brands such as Johnson’s Baby, Neutrogena and Terry’s Chocolate Orange.

Pernille is from Denmark and holds an International MBA from EAP-ESCP, having lived, worked and studied in France, Germany and the UK.

She got involved with PeoplePerHour.com through her interests in the freelancing and consultant community.

Xenios is an experienced entrepreneur. Prior to founding PeoplePerHour.com, he founded Arcarnus - a concierge service pitched to time-starved individuals, and grew it aggressively, leading it to international expansion, with franchisee operations as far out as the Middle East. He is now involved as Chairman to the Board in the growth of the franchise operation. Following Arcarnus Xenios founded Holiday Visions - a luxury tour operator with strong online presence, focused in high-growth travel destinations and complex tours.

Xenios founded PeoplePerHour.com in 2007 to solve an everyday problem faced by most businesses, and especially in the SME sector: finding skilled people to execute small Jobs or tasks on an ad-hoc basis and thus save time and money. He realized that whilst there are many avenues to recruit full-time staff or contract workers (with the associated cost of course) there are no credible channels for finding people to out-source smaller Jobs cost-effectively.

With the rapid uptake of the social networking phenomenon, Xenios realized that there was a huge opportunity for creating a community-like marketplace to simply connect people who need things done, with people who can do them, in an environment of reliability and trust through feedback (eBay-style).

Xenios is a graduate of Cambridge University with an MA/Meng where he was awarded a mark of Distinction for his Masters dissertation. He has attended multiple executive education programmes at Harvard Business School. He is also a noted speaker on entrepreneurship in numerous forums, events and business schools, including INSEAD business school.

At PeoplePerHour he is responsible for the overall strategic direction, business development, and managing the team.