Entrepreneur Peter Ward tells Richard Tyler about his journey from a man with an idea to co-founder of a multi-million business

Peter Ward is standing on a podium at HSBC's towering headquarters in London's Canary Wharf, gesturing to his audience to stand up. He is trying to explain what WAYN.com ("Where are you now?"), the online travel social media site he co-founded with Frenchman Jerome Touze, actually does.

Fortunately, the 29-ye see more

Entrepreneur Peter Ward tells Richard Tyler about his journey from a man with an idea to co-founder of a multi-million business

Peter Ward is standing on a podium at HSBC's towering headquarters in London's Canary Wharf, gesturing to his audience to stand up. He is trying to explain what WAYN.com ("Where are you now?"), the online travel social media site he co-founded with Frenchman Jerome Touze, actually does.

Fortunately, the 29-year-old former management consultant from Enfield, north London, has the natural ability to convince strangers, even bankers, to do what he asks them to do.

With everyone standing, Ward then immediately tells all the men to sit down.

He grins. Then he asks the remaining women whether any of them plan to be in Canary Wharf at 8pm that evening. He tells them that he will be in Smolensky's, a nearby bar, and then - that cheeky smile again - he asks whether anyone would fancy meeting him there for a drink.

After a few giggles and a moment's hesitation they all sit down and Ward is left shrugging his shoulders.

But that is WAYN in a nutshell - a site that lets you tell your friends where you are in the world and what you are up to and also to talk to strangers who might well share your outlook on life, if not your drinking habits. So far 11.5m people have become members.

"WAYN is not a site for backpackers," said Ward. "It's a site for people who have an interest in travel or a global perspective; those wanting to meet people from different places."

When I caught up with Ward at a networking event in downtown San Francisco one evening, he's relaxed and engaging.

One moment he's talking passionately about the characteristics of an entrepreneur and the next he has turned to crack a joke to a young woman he has spotted out of the corner of his eye.

"I believe in the law of attraction," he told me when we sat down the following day at Oracle's mammoth campus headquarters in Silicon Valley, which Ward visited as part of a government-backed social media trade mission.

This time he didn't talk about making new acquaintances but new business ideas. "If you are being what you believe in and you are sharing that with other people it brings into your life those opportunities."

It proved the case with WAYN. Touze, 28, had the idea while travelling during his gap year before starting work at Accenture. "He thought, 'wouldn't it be cool if you had a map showing where all your friends were around the world?'," recounted Ward.

The pair met in London in September 2004 before starting work at Accenture, while both were still in the middle of their world travels. Touze told Ward about his idea, they brought in one of Ward's best friends from school, Mike Lines - who at the time happened to be a computer programmer for Friends Reunited - and WAYN was born, the three splitting the equity equally between them.

The next step was to try to raise some cash - Touze and Ward had £40,000 in debts between them as a result of their travels.

They met Steve Pankhurst, Friends Reunited's co-founder, in a pub and explained the idea. A month later, Pankhurst sent an email back offering £10,000 for a 3.5pc stake. He said: "Just see what you can do with that."

So they did, buying a £5,000 computer server and working up their idea on Saturdays while holding down their new jobs at Accenture during the week. Lines took the ideas and built the website from them. It went live on May 1, 2005 with the same logo that it has today.

They grew membership by offering free international SMS texts, using Google ad words to attract internet users and adopting the email contact importing facilities pioneered by the first generation of social media sites such as Friendster. When the membership hit 30,000 they introduced a subscription model in order to make some money. By the end of 2005, membership had passed the 1m point.

With the site growing in popularity, Touze and Ward took a sabbatical from Accenture to concentrate fully on the site. By November 2006, the company was in the position to sell a minority stake for £5.7m to a consortium led by Esprit Capital Partners, which brought in Lastminute.com co-founder Brent Hoberman as an investor and the company's chairman.

Hoberman encouraged them to reconsider the subscription model now that the likes of Faceboook and Myspace were giving users access for free.

Ward said: "I don't regret what we did with subscription. Yes, we could have become the next Bebo or Facebook had we not charged from the beginning, but equally we were looking at it from the point of view that we had to make money because we did not have the capital and we were looking at it very much as a business."

The fundraising also enabled the three founders to take out £1m. Ward bought "the love of my life", a Porsche Carrera 4S convertible, and a £300,000 house in Enfield. "I did not go mad," he said. "My life has not changed. I still look for the bargains. I still go out with my mates and do rounds. The only difference being that I don't look at my bank balance at the end of the month."

He added, more seriously: "From an entrepreneur's motivation point of view it is important to say that in less than one year of working full time on WAYN I had made as much personal realisation than I would have done if I had stayed at Accenture for my entire career. If that's not enough to make someone think I should try this, then what is?"

He credits much of his drive down to feeling "different" growing up in north London as the only child of an English father and Polish mother.

"My Dad is a typical working class bloke - he worked at the Post Office and BT. My mum got married when she couldn't speak a word of English and worked in a factory and sold double glazing," he said.

"I was very encouraged as a kid so although my parents weren't ambitious in their jobs they were very loving and supportive. I developed an early confidence and that gave me an advantage. And the fact that I was half Polish and half English gave me a different perspective."

WAYN has now become one of the most successful British social networks. It is used by 6.5m people each month.

The traffic, which appeals to advertisers, has also attracted the interest of potential buyers. In 2006 WAYN made a profit of around £406,000 on turnover of £844,000. Sales are due to hit around £1.5m this year, but will generate a lower profit margin as a result of the decision to drop its subscription model in favour of rapid growth in users and advertising.

The company has since hired investment bank Lazards to conduct a "strategic review" of its options, which many have interpreted as hoisting a "For sale" sign.

But Ward is adamant that he is not prepared to sell up soon. He said: "We have not looked at an early exit at any stage and still haven't. We have been rumoured to have been in play for that kind of thing a few times and that was nothing to do with us - we never initiated anything. What [the rumours] did do was put us in play because other organisations said 'oh, you're interested in selling'.

"So we've had expressions of interest and we have hired Lazards to do a strategic review of the business. And that is purely to understand what the options are."

He added: "Our ultimate objective remains accelerating the growth of our business and achieving our vision of becoming and then remaining the largest travel focused portal. Anything that can help us get there is what we are focused on right now."

More than 10% of UK mobile phone users accessed social networking websites such as Facebook, Bebo and MySpace via their handsets at least once a month in the first quarter of 2008, according to research...

...The top 10 most visited social networking websites by mobile users also included Friends Reunited, Where Are You Now?, Yahoo Groups, Faceparty and BBC Communities.

"Social networking is already a global phenomenon and mobile coul see more

More than 10% of UK mobile phone users accessed social networking websites such as Facebook, Bebo and MySpace via their handsets at least once a month in the first quarter of 2008, according to research...

...The top 10 most visited social networking websites by mobile users also included Friends Reunited, Where Are You Now?, Yahoo Groups, Faceparty and BBC Communities.

"Social networking is already a global phenomenon and mobile could be the next big thing in the space," said Kent Ferguson, the client services manager at Nielsen Mobile.

"There could be increased demand for mobile social networking driven by the flat fee price plans offered by the leading operators that give subscribers unlimited mobile internet access."

The most popular mobile social networking pastime was sending messages or mail to other users, with 55% of UK users accessing their profile doing so.

This was followed by reading mail or messages at 47%, viewing pictures at 33%, uploading photos at 29% and adding friends at 21%.

The rest of the top 10 was made up of activities including receiving text alerts, viewing profiles, creating or updating a profile, uploading a video and participating in a chat room.

"In an effort to differentiate their offerings and pull ahead all the [social] networks are looking to what the mobile medium can offer, particularly when it comes to attracting 15- to 24-year-olds, a group highly representative among social networking addicts," said Alex Burmaster, the European internet analyst at Nielsen Online.

Neilsen's survey is based on interviews with just over 10,000 UK mobile phone users.

WAYN.com has received a massive response to its campaign aimed at getting people to reduce their carbon footprint.

The campaign, which was launched about five weeks ago and gave members 12 steps to reduce the impact of carbon emissions, attracted more than 54,000 people to sign up to it who between them made more than 600,000 environmentally-friendly pledges.

WAYN estimates that if all 54,000 people took the step of off-setting their see more

WAYN.com has received a massive response to its campaign aimed at getting people to reduce their carbon footprint.

The campaign, which was launched about five weeks ago and gave members 12 steps to reduce the impact of carbon emissions, attracted more than 54,000 people to sign up to it who between them made more than 600,000 environmentally-friendly pledges.

WAYN estimates that if all 54,000 people took the step of off-setting their flights, it would equate to a possible saving of almost 13.5k tonnes of CO2 – or 17,889 return flights from London to New York.

More than 90% of respondents committed to each of the 12 steps, which include using less water, walking more and encouraging others to conserve energy.

WAYN founder Jerome Touze said he expected the number of pledges to hit a million by the middle of May.

The social networking site launched its own flight offset scheme before Christmas in partnership with Carbon Footprint.

The environmental campaign was launched in response to requests from members that the site highlight the issue of global warming.

Travel social network WAYN is to sell its travel insurance product through Moneysupermarket.com.

WAYN began offering its 1.9m UK members travel insurance last month, through a tie-up with Mondial Assistance.

Members with VIP access to the site, which allows them access to extra features and free SMS, were given the travel insurance product for free, while other WAYN members could buy from the site.

WAYN is now opening up its see more

Travel social network WAYN is to sell its travel insurance product through Moneysupermarket.com.

WAYN began offering its 1.9m UK members travel insurance last month, through a tie-up with Mondial Assistance.

Members with VIP access to the site, which allows them access to extra features and free SMS, were given the travel insurance product for free, while other WAYN members could buy from the site.

WAYN is now opening up its insurance offer to all through the comparison site. Those buying will also be able to redeem one month's free membership to the site.

Matt Jerwood, director of business development, said, "As well as providing travel tips and forums for exchanging travel advice, we want to offer great services and encourage responsible travelling.

"Having WAYN Travel Insurance ranked highly on Moneysupermarket.com will show just how much we are dedicated to getting the best quality for the best prices."

Travel social network WAYN.com is to partner with HotelClub to produce its 2008 consumer survey of global hotels.

The project will culminate in an awards ceremony and the publication of a book to showcase the most popular 300 hotels around the world.

The deal is a first for WAYN and will see the Travelport-owned HotelClub host a series of ceremonies in UK & Ireland, Oceania and Asia.

WAYN has created a dedicated HotelClub pr see more

Travel social network WAYN.com is to partner with HotelClub to produce its 2008 consumer survey of global hotels.

The project will culminate in an awards ceremony and the publication of a book to showcase the most popular 300 hotels around the world.

The deal is a first for WAYN and will see the Travelport-owned HotelClub host a series of ceremonies in UK & Ireland, Oceania and Asia.

WAYN has created a dedicated HotelClub profile page on the site to promote the survey to existing members.

Matt Jerwood, head of business development for WAYN, said: "This is a great example of a community website and home of travel-based user generated content, helping a more traditional business drive a more traditional form of UGC, i.e. books on travellers' favourite hotels.

“It's pretty exciting and complimentary to match-up the different approaches – it's social publishing almost.”

"I think there is an increasingly innovative culture in Britain," says Hoberman, 39, who is busy running his new home furnishings site, mydeco.com. "There is caution with credit crunch and it is a bit harder to raise money but there is still VC [venture capital] money out there. The challenge is where will the next billion-dollar company come from."

Hoberman no doubt hopes it could one day be wayn.com in which he has a stake along with Friends Re see more

"I think there is an increasingly innovative culture in Britain," says Hoberman, 39, who is busy running his new home furnishings site, mydeco.com. "There is caution with credit crunch and it is a bit harder to raise money but there is still VC [venture capital] money out there. The challenge is where will the next billion-dollar company come from."

Hoberman no doubt hopes it could one day be wayn.com in which he has a stake along with Friends Reunited founder Steve Pankhurst.

Wayn (Where are you now?) is a social networking website for travellers.

Sarah or Thomas could be the next Bill Gates. So could anyone with a bright idea and a laptop - pensioner, housewife or student. Oliver Bennett finds out how broadband is turning Britain into a nation of entrepreneurs.

Some of the big names of the first boom have returned, including Brent Hoberman, an architect of the UK end of Web 1.0 and the one responsible, along with Martha Lane Fox, for Lastminute.com, perhaps the most famous first-wave Bri see more

Sarah or Thomas could be the next Bill Gates. So could anyone with a bright idea and a laptop - pensioner, housewife or student. Oliver Bennett finds out how broadband is turning Britain into a nation of entrepreneurs.

Some of the big names of the first boom have returned, including Brent Hoberman, an architect of the UK end of Web 1.0 and the one responsible, along with Martha Lane Fox, for Lastminute.com, perhaps the most famous first-wave Brit dotcom, which took the travel industry's "bucket shop" and put it on the internet. The technology - and Lane Fox - lent it vital glamour. Hoberman went on to help found a site called Wayn, a social-networking site for travellers standing for Where Are You Now?, of which he remains a non-executive director, and he has a new start-up, Mydeco, a home-decoration site. "I think London is the best place to be an internet entrepreneur right now. Yes, the people and the office spaces are expensive, but there’s a vibrant network, good infrastructure - and the UK knows how to do creative industries."

Travel and lifestyle online social network WAYN.com has claimed a 185% rise in global unique visitors for February.

This represents a rise from 2.2 million this time last year to 6.3 million visitors.

The site now claims to have more than 11 million members in 193 countries, with 15,000 joining daily.

The growth demonstrates a continuing interest in Web 2.0 in the travel sector, while other social networks are facing a see more

Travel and lifestyle online social network WAYN.com has claimed a 185% rise in global unique visitors for February.

This represents a rise from 2.2 million this time last year to 6.3 million visitors.

The site now claims to have more than 11 million members in 193 countries, with 15,000 joining daily.

The growth demonstrates a continuing interest in Web 2.0 in the travel sector, while other social networks are facing a decline.

Nielsen Online European internet analyst Alex Burmaster said: “The last few months have seen a plateauing in the popularity of the larger, more general, social networks, and 2008 looks to be the year when the ‘nest big thing’ around the corner, or more appropriately, the ‘next little thing’ around the corner, will be the niche social networks.

“This is where we are likely to see the greatest growth – networks based on a particular lifestyle or interest, such as music, wealth, business or travel – the latter through sites like WAYN.”

WAYN co-founder and co-CEO Jerome Touze attributed the growth to opening the site up to free interaction.

“We opened the site to a free interaction model last year, and this has clearly proved to be a great success,” he said.

by Phil Davies

Friends from Ghana, Tanzania, Africa or Norway? Young people became crazy about looking for friends in the internet. Friends from nasza-klasa.pl are not enough for them. They storm social networking sites and correspond with people in the same age, whom they met during the trips abroad.

WAYN.com is a British social network. Already few millions of Internet users from all over the world use it. It works similarly to nasza-klasa.pl. Members can u see more

Friends from Ghana, Tanzania, Africa or Norway? Young people became crazy about looking for friends in the internet. Friends from nasza-klasa.pl are not enough for them. They storm social networking sites and correspond with people in the same age, whom they met during the trips abroad.

WAYN.com is a British social network. Already few millions of Internet users from all over the world use it. It works similarly to nasza-klasa.pl. Members can upload pictures and videos there, they can also write blogs. They look for friends, whom they studied with abroad or whom they met while they were working in the other country.

Among them there is a lot of Polish people for example Zuza, geography student from Łódź. "I was at the exchange program in Holland. When I came back to Poland I created a blog in English, especially for my new friends, whom I lost the contact with when I left Holland."

Julita Śliwińska, student of physics on Cracow AGH University of Science, she worked in London during vacation. She made friends with some African people. She came back to her country but she is still in touch with her friends through this site. “We write to each other, we write about the important events in our lives. We upload photos from interesting parties, where we had fun.” – the girl says.

Izabela Franckiewicz, sociologist from University of Łódź is not surprised that social networking is so popular. She thinks that this can be short-lived admiration. "Internauts want to be seen, that’s why they discuss on the forums and portals. Although if they don’t have any advantages from their virtual activity in the real world, their interest in using portals will disappear" – thinks Franckiewicz.

What kind of advantages can have members of wayn.com? Julita Śliwińska dreams of visiting her friends in Ghana. She already received an invitation. Thirty years old Marek is already realizing his dreams. He boasts about his trips on his Internet profile. In 2006 he was in Malesia and Tailand. Last year he was traveling in Singapore and Ireland. Now he is in Norway. He has many friends from all over the world – Europeans, Africans, Asians.

Agnieszka Moncznik, editor of the Bezdroże publication, that publishes guidebooks says: For many people invitation from a friend like this is a chance for exotic trips. Far away from hotel, touristic resorts and beaten tracks.

A little bit different is Mariusz Makowski’s, society-psychologist from Economical University in Cracow, point of view. He does research about popularity of social networks.

"International contacts increase our ego, we boast with them. Our Internet profile is a vanity fair. We show ourselves between popular people who achieved something, who visited the world and saw a lot. What’s more a lot of friends can give us illusory sense of security. The more friends we have on our list, the more people we can potentially rely on – claims Makowski. Author: Maciej Stańczyk Translation: Anna Waszewska