Daniel Crown: I launched a £19m site as a dotcom intern

Daniel Crown turned around flagging website Lookfantastic.com. And with the explosion of the internet and his new website aimed at hair care for men, the male grooming market has never looked better.

As the son of a hairdresser, Daniel Crown was always in and out of salons as a child. But he "never felt passionate about learning how to cut hair". So when his father secured him an internship at a small web-design firm, Crown jumped at the chance. "It was 1996 and the dotcom boom was just beginning I wanted to be part of something exciting."

He impressed in his first three months and was offered a job. The firm grew quickly and soon had around 50 of its own websites. But such rapid success came at a price the small firm "was spreading itself too thin with so many sites". After two years the firm was facing "serious funding problems". So in 1998 Crown offered to leave on the condition that he could take one of the firm's fledgling sites Lookfantastic.com with him.

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James McKeigue

James graduated from Keele University with a BA (Hons) in English literature and history, and has a certificate in journalism from the NCTJ. James has worked as a freelance journalist in various Latin American countries.He also had a spell at ITV, as welll as wring for Television Business International and covering the European equity markets for the Forbes.com London bureau. James has travelled extensively in emerging markets, reporting for international energy magazines such as Oil and Gas Investor, and institutional publications such as the Commonwealth Business Environment Report. He is currently the managing editor of LatAm INVESTOR, the UK's only Latin American finance magazine.