Business Profile: Internet millionaire Carl Churchill

Feb 2 2010 by Tom Scotney & Jonny Greatrex

What a difference a decade makes. For Carl Churchill, the last ten years has taken him from being a GCSE student in Shirley to a director at a £20 million internet company.

But he might have had more reason than most to expect what 2000-2010 was going to bring.

The internet entrepreneur was tipped at the age of just 16 as one to watch at an early stage – first by the Birmingham Post’s sister newspaper the Sunday Mercury, and then later by the Independent rich list, which put him at the top of a list of teenagers likely to be among the high earners in 2020.

Praise indeed, to be listed above the likes of Keira Knightley and Wayne Rooney.

And so far he has looked likely to beat even those expectations, after having founded and led a string of successful computer and internet companies with just half of the time gone.

When he was listed he was at the head of a computer company but had to get the bus to work becuase his talents blossomed too soon for the legal driving limit.

The entrepreneur says being named alongside Keira and the young Rooney eventually cemented his place in the business world.

The 25-year-old, who now lives in Southampton working on his latest venture Murphx, says: “I had a whirlwind couple of days – I was in the front page of the Independent, I was on the second page of the Daily Mail, it was kind of crazy. It’s not that you become recognised because it’s a business thing and people tend not to recognise businessmen very often because they’re not on reality TV.

“But you have almost some inherent credibility by being part of that, because people will say ‘oh I remember you, you were in the rich list with Keira Knightley’.

“That publicity has definitely done me some favours, and has almost become sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy. It was interesting because at the time the stories came out it was ‘Carl set to make a million’.

“Don’t get me wrong – the first million was hard, but £1 million to £10 million was surprisingly quick – it’s quite odd really. But 10-20 is a fair bit tougher. It’s not just about growth, it’s about changing a lot of the way you work as a business, about changing your focus.”

His first companies – Bits New Media and Bits and PCs – quickly found success when he launched them while still at school.

He had been invited to set up the websites by the Birmingham-based Benchmark Group, which had been impressed by efforts he had knocked up at home.

His first foray into business, which had started as a teenager, ended when he sold the companies in 2001. 

His next move was to set up an internet service provider (ISP), called DMC Internet, that went on to pick up customers including the Labour Party, the House of Commons and the NHS.

But by that point the dot.com bubble had burst, and it would take another venture for Carl to make his millions.