A former student at

City of London School , established = , closed = , type = Public school Boys' independent day school , president = , head_label = Headmaster , head = Alan Bird , chair_label = Chair of Governors , chair = Ian Seaton , founder = John Carpenter , speciali ...

and

Merton College, Oxford Merton College (in full: The House or College of Scholars of Merton in the University of Oxford) is one of the Colleges of Oxford University, constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. Its foundation can be traced back to the ...

, Tim Jackson (born 1965) founded QXL.com, an online

auction An auction is usually a process of buying and selling goods or services by offering them up for bids, taking bids, and then selling the item to the highest bidder or buying the item from the lowest bidder. Some exceptions to this definition ex ...

service, which went public in 1999 at a valuation of around $400m. The company merged with its largest German rival, Ricardo, was renamed Tradus, and was sold to African media group

Naspers Naspers Limited is a South African multinational internet, technology and multimedia holding company headquartered in Cape Town, with interests in online retail, publishing and venture capital investment. Naspers' principal shareholder is its ...

for around $2 billion in December 2007. Between 1999 and 2001, Jackson was managing director of Carlyle Internet Partners Europe, a $700m fund that invests in European technology businesses. He remains a senior advisor to Carlyle and is in demand as a speaker and writer. At the

World Economic Forum The World Economic Forum (WEF) is an international non-governmental and lobbying organisation based in Cologny, canton of Geneva, Switzerland. It was founded on 24 January 1971 by German engineer and economist Klaus Schwab. The foundation, ...

in Davos 2001, Jackson was selected as one of the 100 "Global Leaders of Tomorrow". In a survey by Business 2.0 magazine amongst new economy business people, he was judged the second most important person they would like to have in their contact book. He currently (2014) leads Walking Ventures a seed fund which invests in early-stage Internet and other technology startups based in Europe. Jackson has also written a number of books.

Publications

* ''Inside Intel: Andy Grove and the Rise of the World's Most Powerful Chip Company''. Dutton Adult. 1997 * ''Richard Branson, Virgin King: Inside Richard Branson's Business Empire''. Prima Lifestyles. 1998. (a biography of

Richard Branson Sir Richard Charles Nicholas Branson (born 18 July 1950) is a British billionaire, entrepreneur, and business magnate. In the 1970s he founded the Virgin Group, which today controls more than 400 companies in various fields. Branson expressed ...

) * ''Turning Japanese: The Fight for Industrial Control of the New Europe''. HarperCollins. 1993

References

1965 births Living people People educated at the City of London School Alumni of Merton College, Oxford {{UK-nonfiction-writer-stub