Rob Lewis (born 23 May 1969) is an English businessman and serial entrepreneur. Lewis has established several publishing and technology ventures including Business & Technology magazine, Cromwell Media, Silicon Media Group,

Omnifone Omnifone was a UK-based company that was an independent provider of cloud-based unlimited music services to consumer electronics vendors, mobile carriers, Internet service providers and consumer brands including RIM, Sony, HP, and rara.com. ...

rara.com rara was a music streaming media service. It operated between December 2011 and March 2015. It offered ad-free, on-demand music streaming from a range of major and independent record labels, including Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainm ...

and most recently ROXi.Walton, Mark
"UK’s Electric Jukebox takes on Spotify, Apple Music with all-in-one music appliance"
'' Ars Technica'', London, 14 October 2015. Retrieved on 27 May 2016. Lewis is a 2009

Ernst & Young Ernst & Young Global Limited, trade name EY, is a multinational professional services partnership headquartered in London, England. EY is one of the largest professional services networks in the world. Along with Deloitte, KPMG and Pricewat ...

Entrepreneur of the Year.

Biography

Lewis was educated at

Latymer Upper School (Slowly Therefore Surely) , established = , closed = , sister_school = Godolphin and Latymer School , type = Public schoolIndependent day school , head_label = H ...

, London. He gained a

MA degree A Master of Arts ( la, Magister Artium or ''Artium Magister''; abbreviated MA, M.A., AM, or A.M.) is the holder of a master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The degree is usually contrasted with that of Master of Science. Tho ...

in Economics from

Jesus College, Cambridge Jesus College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college's full name is The College of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Saint John the Evangelist and the glorious Virgin Saint Radegund, near Cambridge. Its common name comes fr ...

Career

Journalism and publishing

Lewis established his first venture, the ''Cambridge Weekly Review'', as a rival publication to '' Varsity'', whilst reading Economics at Jesus College Cambridge. He sold the publication to Associate Publishing prior to taking his finals. Lewis returned to publishing after two years in politics, founding and editing ''Business & Technology'' magazine, which he sold to Dennis Publishing in 1993; the publication was absorbed as part of ''

Computer Weekly ''Computer Weekly'' is a digital magazine and website for IT professionals in the United Kingdom. It was formerly published as a weekly print magazine by Reed Business Information for over 45 years. Topics covered within the magazine include outs ...

''.

Politics

Lewis spent two years after Cambridge as a researcher and economic advisor to

Huddersfield Huddersfield is a market town in the Kirklees district in West Yorkshire, England. It is the administrative centre and largest settlement in the Kirklees district. The town is in the foothills of the Pennines. The River Holme's confluence into ...

Labour Labour or labor may refer to: * Childbirth, the delivery of a baby * Labour (human activity), or work ** Manual labour, physical work ** Wage labour, a socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer ** Organized labour and the labour ...

Barry Sheerman Barry John Sheerman (born 17 August 1940) is a British Labour and Co-operative politician who has served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Huddersfield, previously Huddersfield East, since 1979. He is also Labour's longest continuously serv ...

in the run-up to the 1992 general election.

Internet ventures

In 1994, Lewis co-founded internet software company Cromwell Media with Phil Sant and Mark Knight, providing scalable enterprise level technology solutions that power insurance sites including MORE TH>N. While developing Cromwell Media in the years that followed, a chance meeting at a London party with a team of scientists from CERN in 1998 convinced Lewis of the power of IT publishing over the internet. Lewis founded Silicon Media Group with Eve-Marie Sant and

Roger Knight Roger David Verdon Knight (born 6 September 1946) is an English administrator, cricketer and schoolmaster. He was awarded the OBE in 2007. He is an Honorary Life Member of the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) and was President of the club from ...

the same year, launching IT news site Silicon.com in the UK, and sister sites Silicon.fr in Paris and

Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the third-largest city in Germany, after Berlin and Ha ...

-based Silicon.de. In November 1999, Lewis reportedly raised over £11m in investment for Silicon.com from a consortium of venture capital firms headed by

Amadeus Capital Partners Amadeus Capital Partners is a venture capital firm that invests in European high-technology companies, founded by Anne Glover and Hermann Hauser in 1997. It is a member of the British Private Equity and Venture Capital Association and is approve ...

, with reports valuing the company at £800m in May 2000. By the time he was 30, ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'' reported Lewis as one of the top six most successful young entrepreneurs in the UK. That same month, May 2000, aided by the ex-CEO of the Hoskyns Group (now

Capgemini Capgemini SE is a multinational information technology (IT) services and consulting company, headquartered in Paris, France. History Capgemini was founded by Serge Kampf in 1967 as an enterprise management and data processing company. The comp ...

) Jim Feeney, Lewis sold Cromwell Media to InterX for £850m. Lewis went on to sell Silicon Media Group to NASDAQ-listed

CNET Networks ''CNET'' (short for "Computer Network") is an American media website that publishes reviews, news, articles, blogs, podcasts, and videos on technology and consumer electronics globally. ''CNET'' originally produced content for radio and televi ...

(part of

CBS CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS, the abbreviation of its former legal name Columbia Broadcasting System, is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainm ...

) in 2002.

Renewable energy

Lewis is an investor in Wind Energy, a renewable energy company dedicated to the sensitive development of on-shore

wind farm A wind farm or wind park, also called a wind power station or wind power plant, is a group of wind turbines in the same location used to produce electricity. Wind farms vary in size from a small number of turbines to several hundred wind turb ...

s, assessing potential sites across

Scotland Scotland (, ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a Anglo-Scottish border, border with England to the southeast ...

since 2002. Lewis brokered a majority stake sale to US-based power and utilities company

AES Corporation The AES Corporation is an American utility and power generation company. It owns and operates power plants, which it uses to generate and sell electricity to end users and intermediaries like utilities and industrial facilities. AES is headquart ...

in 2007, pairing Wind Energy with AES owned SeaWest Wind Power bringing a host of development skills to Wind Energy and accelerating the development of clean renewable energy for the UK. Wind Energy currently has nine wind farms in development, including North Rhins in Southern

where permission was granted for 11

Vestas Vestas Wind Systems A/S is a Danish manufacturer, seller, installer, and servicer of wind turbines that was founded in 1945. The company operates manufacturing plants in Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Taiwan, India, Italy, Romania, the Un ...

V80 turbines with a capacity of 22 megawatts of electricity. The wind farm will meet the annual electricity needs of around 15,000 homes, over a fifth of the households in Dumfries & Galloway.

Omnifone

Lewis founded

in January 2003 to enable the next generation of digital content services to be delivered globally. The company develops cloud based interoperable unlimited music services for consumer electronics vendors, mobile carriers and internet service providers across multiple in-home, in-car, mobile and PC device platforms or not. Lewis secured the first international licensing for unlimited music services with all four major music labels in June 2007 rolling out the company’s multi-award-winning MusicStation powered unlimited music services to millions of device users across four continents with the likes of

Sony , commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professiona ...

, HP, BSkyB,

Sony Ericsson Sony Mobile Communications Inc. ( ja, ソニーモバイルコミュニケーションズ株式会社) was a multinational telecommunications company founded on October 1, 2001, as a joint venture between Sony Group Corporation and Ericsson. ...

Vodafone Vodafone Group plc () is a British multinational telecommunications company. Its registered office and global headquarters are in Newbury, Berkshire, England. It predominantly operates services in Asia, Africa, Europe, and Oceania. , Vod ...

, Telenor,

Hutchison Telecom Hutchison Asia Telecom Group or HAT, is a division of Hong Kong-based multinational conglomerate CK Hutchison Holdings. The division provides telecommunications services to several Asian countries. The division was formerly incorporated as H ...

and

Vodacom Vodacom Group Limited is a South-Western African mobile communications company, providing voice, messaging, data and converged services to over 55 million customers. From its roots in South Africa, Vodacom has grown its operations to include ...

rara.com

Lewis also served as Chairman of streaming music service

, launched across the US and Europe on 13 December 2011 on web and Android smartphones. The direct to consumer service was powered by Omnifone's MusicStation platform and was also licensed by the music service provider.

ROXi

Lewis founded ROXi in 2014Cooper, Daniel
"Electric Jukebox: the music player for everyone else"
''

Engadget ''Engadget'' ( ) is a multilingual technology blog network with daily coverage of gadgets and consumer electronics. ''Engadget'' manages ten blogs four of which are written in English and six have international versions with independent editor ...

'', London, 14 October 2015. Retrieved on 27 May 2016. after he tried to buy his parents a music streaming system for Christmas. "...I would have to provide technical support - that was the light-bulb moment." The thought of constant queries about how to use a complex system was not attractive, so he set about creating something much simpler. "I set the team a challenge. Can we make something that comes in a box, affordable for most people, open the box, and two minutes later you've got a jukebox with all the world's music."Cellan-Jones, Rory
"Electric Jukebox - will anyone pay for music?"
''

BBC News BBC News is an operational business division of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs in the UK and around the world. The department is the world's largest broad ...

'', London, 14 October 2015. Retrieved on 27 May 2016. ROXi announced the Electric Jukebox digital media player on 14 October 2015. Electric Jukebox was discontinued and succeeded by ROXi, a

television Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertisin ...

based music entertainment experience with

music streaming A music streaming service is a type of streaming media service that focuses primarily on music, and sometimes other forms of digital audio content such as podcasts. These services are usually subscription-based services allowing users to stream d ...

radio Radio is the technology of signaling and communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 30 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transmi ...

karaoke Karaoke (; ; , clipped compound of Japanese ''kara'' "empty" and ''ōkesutora'' "orchestra") is a type of interactive entertainment usually offered in clubs and bars, where people sing along to recorded music using a microphone. The music i ...

, music games, sound machine and visuals in August 2017. ROXi is available on

pay TV Pay television, also known as subscription television, premium television or, when referring to an individual service, a premium channel, refers to subscription-based television services, usually provided by multichannel television providers, b ...

and

Smart TV A smart TV, also known as a connected TV (CTV), is a traditional television set with integrated Internet and interactive Web 2.0 features, which allows users to stream music and videos, browse the internet, and view photos. Smart TVs are a techn ...

platforms and via the ROXi Music System digital media player. Lewis brokered a partnership with

Sky The sky is an unobstructed view upward from the surface of the Earth. It includes the atmosphere and outer space. It may also be considered a place between the ground and outer space, thus distinct from outer space. In the field of astronomy, ...

to bring ROXi to millions of homes on

Sky Q Sky Q is a subscription-based television and entertainment service operated by British satellite television provider Sky, as a part of its operations in Austria and Germany, Ireland, Italy and in the UK. The name also refers to the Sky Q set- ...

in September 2020. Lewis has raised over £11.6m ($15m) for ROXi to date with early backing from former

Take That Take That are an English pop group formed in Manchester in 1990. The group currently consists of Gary Barlow, Howard Donald and Mark Owen. The original line-up also featured Jason Orange and Robbie Williams. Barlow is the group's lead singer ...

member

Robbie Williams Robert Peter Williams (born 13 February 1974) is an English singer and songwriter. He found fame as a member of the pop group Take That from 1990 to 1995, and achieved commercial success after launching a solo career in 1996. His debut stud ...

, Grammy award-winning artist Sheryl Crow,

Britain’s Got Talent ''Britain's Got Talent'' (often abbreviated to ''BGT'') is a televised British talent show competition, and part of the global ''Got Talent'' franchise created by Simon Cowell. Presented by Anthony McPartlin and Declan Donnelly (colloquially ...

judge, singer and presenter

Alesha Dixon Alesha Anjanette Dixon (born 7 October 1978) is an English singer, rapper, dancer, television personality, and author. She gained recognition in the early 2000s as a member of the R&B, garage and hip hop group Mis-Teeq. The group disbanded i ...

, and actor, writer and comedian

Stephen Fry Stephen John Fry (born 24 August 1957) is an English actor, broadcaster, comedian, director and writer. He first came to prominence in the 1980s as one half of the comic double act Fry and Laurie, alongside Hugh Laurie, with the two starring ...

. Lewis also received investment for ROXi from former

Formula One Formula One (also known as Formula 1 or F1) is the highest class of international racing for open-wheel single-seater formula racing cars sanctioned by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA). The World Drivers' Championship, ...

and

McLaren Group The McLaren Group is a British holding company based in Woking, England, which is involved in Formula One and other motorsport and the manufacture of luxury cars. The group was founded by Ron Dennis shortly after his acquisition of the McLaren ...

executive

Ron Dennis Ronald Dennis CBE (born 1 June 1947) is a British businessman and Official British Business Ambassador for the United Kingdom. He is best known for his former role as owner, CEO, chairman and founder of McLaren Group. Dennis was removed from ...

who took a 10% stake in the company alongside investors such as Henrik Holmark the former CFO of

jewellery Jewellery ( UK) or jewelry (U.S.) consists of decorative items worn for personal adornment, such as brooches, rings, necklaces, earrings, pendants, bracelets, and cufflinks. Jewellery may be attached to the body or the clothes. From a wester ...

chain Pandora Henrik Holmark, and Saracens rugby club owner Nigel Wray, the former manager of Irish rock band U2

Paul McGuinness Paul McGuinness (born 16 June 1951) is the founder of ''Principle Management Limited'', a popular music act management company based in Dublin, in the Republic of Ireland. He was the manager of the rock band U2 from 1978 to 2013. Early life ...

and

TomTom TomTom N.V. is a Dutch multinational developer and creator of location technology and consumer electronics. Founded in 1991 and headquartered in Amsterdam, TomTom released its first generation of satellite navigation devices to market in 2004. ...

co-founder Mark Gretton who invested in the company.

Political campaigning

Lewis was the original author of the Entrepreneurs' letter, an

open letter An open letter is a letter that is intended to be read by a wide audience, or a letter intended for an individual, but that is nonetheless widely distributed intentionally. Open letters usually take the form of a letter addressed to an indiv ...

published on the front page of ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper '' The Sunday Times'' (f ...

'' newspaper in the final week of the 2010 general election campaign and signed by leading UK entrepreneurs. The letter, also featured in ''

The Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a national British daily broadsheet newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed across the United Kingdom and internationally. It was f ...

'', warned of the dangers of a

Liberal Democrat Several political parties from around the world have been called the Liberal Democratic Party or Liberal Democrats. These parties usually follow a liberal democratic ideology. Active parties Former parties See also *Liberal democracy *Lib ...

coalition government, and its potential effects on entrepreneurial business activity in the UK. The letter was eventually signed by over 110 UK entrepreneurs, including Simon Calver, CEO of

LoveFilm LoveFilm was a United Kingdom–based provider of DVD-by-mail and streaming video on demand in the United Kingdom, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Germany. Acquired by Amazon.com in 2011, the service had reached 2 million subscribers. It claimed ...

Ben Goldsmith Benjamin James Goldsmith (born 28 October 1980) is an English financier and environmentalist. The son of financier James Goldsmith and Lady Annabel Goldsmith he is founder and CEO of London-listed investment firm Menhaden, which focuses on the ...

partner at WHEB Ventures Limited and

Julie Meyer Julie Marie Meyer MBE is an American businesswoman and the author of ''Welcome to Entrepreneur Country''. She is the CEO and member of the board of Viva Investment Partners. She founded Ariadne Capital Limited and Ariadne Capital Malta Limited, a ...

CEO of Ariadne Capital and online dragon for

BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...

...