Okay, this was 2005, but some of this ranking of successful UK technology, internet and new economy entrepreneurs and businesses still points to the niches where immense fortunes can be built.

Take Zen Internet, one of the UK’s best and most successful internet service providers. At the age of 15, selling pet food at the local market, Peter Tang had earned enough money to buy a computer. He later went on to do a degree at Salford University in computer systems and after graduating worked for a computer hardware designer. He packed it in to travel the world. Born to a Chinese father and English mother he returned to his native Rochdale in 1994 where he heard about the internet in a pub. Whether or not he meditated to achieve intuition, the launch of his ISP service, Zen Internet, was an enlightened decision. In the year to September 2005, Zen made a near £1.5m profit and is easily worth ?30m. And Tang owns it all.

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