Daniel Maurice Wagner (born 28 July 1963) is a British Internet

entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value. With this definition, entrepreneurship is viewed as change, generally entailing risk beyond what is normally encountered in starting a business, which may include other values th ...

. He created MAID, one of the first online information platforms in 1984. He was later the founder and CEO of

Venda Venda () was a Bantustan in northern South Africa, which is fairly close to the South African border with Zimbabwe to the north, while to the south and east, it shared a long border with another black homeland, Gazankulu. It is now part of the ...

, ATTRAQT, Powa Technologies and most recently, Rezolve.

Early life

Wagner was born in

Edgware Edgware () is a suburban town in northern Greater London, mostly in the London Borough of Barnet but with small parts falling in the London Borough of Harrow and in the London Borough of Brent. Edgware is centred north-northwest of Charing Cros ...

Middlesex Middlesex (; abbreviation: Middx) is a historic county in southeast England. Its area is almost entirely within the wider urbanised area of London and mostly within the ceremonial county of Greater London, with small sections in neighbouri ...

on 28 July 1963. He was educated at

Merchant Taylors' School, Northwood Small things grow in harmony , established = , closed = , coordinates = , pushpin_map = , type = Independent day school , religion = Church o ...

but expelled when he was 13, before attending several schools, ending up at

University College School ("Slowly but surely") , established = , closed = , type = Public schoolIndependent day school , religion = , president = , head_label = Headmaster , head = Mark Beard , r_head_label = , r_he ...

, London. Wagner dropped out of school when he was sixteen years old to work as a shop assistant for entrepreneur Julian Richer at

Richer Sounds Richer Sounds is a British home entertainment retailer that operates through a chain of 51 stores and through online, mainly in England. The business was 100% owned by Julian Richer, the founder and managing director of the company, who in 2 ...

. Afterwards he joined an advertising agency as an account executive. There he came up with the idea of creating databases of records about businesses as a resource for marketing professionals.

Career

MAID/Dialog

After Wagner left his job at the advertising agency, he founded the online information company MAID (''Market Analysis Information Database'') in 1984. The company grew quickly and obtained a 26 percent market-share. According to ''The Observer'' he was "one of the first people to realise the benefits of packaging electronic information and data for scientists, librarians and other specialists." The company went public on the stock market in 1994 and was renamed to Dialog. It was also listed on

NASDAQ The Nasdaq Stock Market () (National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations Stock Market) is an American stock exchange based in New York City. It is the most active stock trading venue in the US by volume, and ranked second ...

in 1995. Wagner became known for becoming a CEO of a public company in his 20s and for presiding over the company's share price decline in the

dot-com crash The dot-com bubble (dot-com boom, tech bubble, or the Internet bubble) was a stock market bubble in the late 1990s, a period of massive growth in the use and adoption of the Internet. Between 1995 and its peak in March 2000, the Nasdaq Compos ...

in 2000. Subsequently, it was nicknamed by the city and a number of publications as 'Dial-a-dog'. In 1997, Wagner agreed a deal to license search technology (InfoSort) to

Fujitsu is a Japanese multinational information and communications technology equipment and services corporation, established in 1935 and headquartered in Tokyo. Fujitsu is the world's sixth-largest IT services provider by annual revenue, and the l ...

of Japan which was hailed by Prime Minister

Tony Blair Sir Anthony Charles Lynton Blair (born 6 May 1953) is a British former politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007. He previously served as Leader of th ...

. At a photo shoot ahead of the MAID

IPO An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investment ...

Wagner wore a

Donald Duck Donald Fauntleroy Duck is a cartoon character created by The Walt Disney Company. Donald is an anthropomorphic white duck with a yellow-orange bill, legs, and feet. He typically wears a sailor shirt and cap with a bow tie. Donald is known fo ...

waistcoat and this "flamboyant" attire was blamed for reducing the value of the company's shares by 10 p. In 1997 the share price of Dialog dropped 95 percent.

Venda Limited

In April 2001, Wagner founded Venda as one of the first cloud based, enterprise class commerce platforms using the technology assets from

Boo.com Boo.com was a short-lived British eCommerce business, founded in 1998 by Swedes Ernst Malmsten, Kajsa Leander and Patrik Hedelin, who were regarded as sophisticated Internet entrepreneurs in Europe by the investors because they had created an onl ...

as the foundation for the offering. He bought the

assets for just £250,000 after they had invested over £70 million in the platform and operations.

Powa Technologies

In 2007 he also founded Powa Technologies, an e-commerce business based on Venda Inc's small business solution, but with additional services for in-store and mobile point of sale and software for mobile payments. In February 2016, the

Financial Times The ''Financial Times'' (''FT'') is a British daily newspaper printed in broadsheet and published digitally that focuses on business and economic current affairs. Based in London, England, the paper is owned by a Japanese holding company, Nik ...

reported that the company had missed payments to staff and third parties, two years after raising substantial sums in investment. On 19 February 2016, Powa Technologies went into administration. After the collapse of Powa Technologies, a series of articles by The Financial Times and the BBC called into question several claims that had been made by Wagner during his tenure as CEO. Powa's self-proclaimed 2014 valuation of $2.6 billion was investigated and

FT Alphaville FT Alphaville is a daily news and commentary service for financial market professionals created by the ''Financial Times'' in October 2006. The founding editor was Paul Murphy. He was succeeded in 2017 by Izabella Kaminska. Kaminska resigne ...

concluded that £75 million was a more accurate figure. Most of the partners that Wagner claimed had signed deals with Powa were found to have instead signed non binding Letters of Intent that did not carry any obligations. In response to the criticism, Wagner told Business Insider in August 2016, "Regarding the LOIs, they were contracts committing the merchants to use Powa technology adhering to the terms and conditions published on the Powa website." In November 2016, ''The Daily Telegraph'' reported Powa's administrators were examining payments made to offshore vehicles linked to Wagner and his associates. In November 2016, the newspaper '' City A.M.'' reported that Wagner was to enter into legal proceedings against a former Powa directors and investors, accusing them of colluding to force the company into administration. In December 2017, the Times reported the High Court had dismissed Wagner's application to set aside a statutory demand for the repayment of a $2 million loan from former Powa director Ben White. White and Wagner subsequently settled all claims in a private agreement.

References

External links

Official website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wagner, Dan English businesspeople Businesspeople in online retailing 1963 births Living people People educated at University College School People from Edgware English chief executives English company founders Businesspeople from London British technology company founders