David Rowe (born 1958) is a London-based high tech entrepreneur who founded

Easynet Easynet was a managed services provider and delivered integrated networks, hosting and unified communications services to organisations globally. The company was later renamed Easynet Global Services, and a sister company, Easynet Connect, was fo ...

, David Rowe: European Easy Rider
/ref> a U.K. ISP in 1994, alongside Cyberia, one of the world's first commercial cybercafes. In recent years, he has founded his own high-tech

venture capital Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which ha ...

busines
Black Green Capital
in 2013 as well as being the CEO o
Hydro66
ref name=":1"> an Ultra Green Datacentre project based out of Boden, Sweden. In 2005, Rowe was selected by the

National Portrait Gallery National Portrait Gallery may refer to: *National Portrait Gallery (Australia), in Canberra *National Portrait Gallery (Sweden), in Mariefred *National Portrait Gallery (United States), in Washington, D.C. *National Portrait Gallery, London, with s ...

for entrepreneurship in Telecoms and the Internet.

Early life and career

David was brought up in Plymouth, England and went to the local comprehensive school: Plymstock Comprehensive. In 1977, David went to Portsmouth Polytechnic sponsored by

Kodak The Eastman Kodak Company (referred to simply as Kodak ) is an American public company that produces various products related to its historic basis in analogue photography. The company is headquartered in Rochester, New York, and is incorpor ...

to study Business Studies (BA) and on completion moved to Singapore to teach English. Whilst there David played football for Tiong Bahru and helped win the Presidents Cup in 1982. From Singapore David went to Tokyo and studied Japanese and taught English from 1983-1986. On return to England David completed an MSc in Computing at Coventry University and went on to co-found CSBI in Poland in 1990, a banking software start-up in Poland sold in 1994 to Computerland.

Business career

In 1994, David founded

, a U.K. ISP, alongside Cyberia, one of the world's first commercial cybercafes. Easynet was one of the first Internet companies in the U.K. to list on AIM in 1996, and subsequently on the LSE in 1999. Easynet created subsidiaries in a number of European countries and pioneered alternative local loop infrastructure in the UK. In 2001, Easynet merged wit
Ipsaris
the U.K. fibre optic infrastructure provider owned by Marconi. In 2006, Easynet was bought by

BSkyB Sky UK Limited is a British broadcaster and telecommunications company that provides television and broadband Internet services, fixed line and mobile telephone services to consumers and businesses in the United Kingdom. It is a subsidiary of ...

for £211m and Rowe worked for James Murdoch as part of the Sky management team. In 2010, Rowe led the buyout team of Easynet Corporate services from Sky alongside LDC, a UK

private equity In the field of finance, the term private equity (PE) refers to investment funds, usually limited partnerships (LP), which buy and restructure financially weak companies that produce goods and provide services. A private-equity fund is both a ty ...

company owned by Lloyds Bank. In 2013, David left Easynet to start his own high tech

busines
Black Green Capital
Among the investments wa
Hydro66
an Ultra Green Datacenter project optimised for minimum carbon footprint using hydropower and based in Northern Sweden. David became Chairman and in 2018 Hydro66 listed on the Canadian secondary stock exchange (CSE) via a reverse take-over. In 2019 David became the CEO of Hydro66. In March 2021, Hydro66 was sold to Northern Data a specialist HPC infrastructure company listed on the Deutsche Borse. Hydro66 subsequently changed its name to Sixty Six Capital and remained on the CSE as a publicly listed investment company.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rowe, David 1958 births Living people British businesspeople