The Oaks

So here we are, then - back to where it all started. Our actual anniversary may be 9th June, but philosophically, it will always be Oaks Day, because Oaks Day 2000 it was, and the Oaks was our first ever market. Love Divine won it. From memory, I think about £3,400 was matched.

I can well remember the thrill of the first few bets being matched - compounded, perhaps, by the technical difficulties we had had on the three occasions we had showed off the product in the days before launch. Two of those were launch parties, and rather public; the other was in the privacy of my parents' house in Datchet, to the Times' racing correspondent, Alan Lee.

I forget now why it was that I had called Alan. I suspect it would have been that he had formerly been the Times' cricket correspondent, and the previous year I had got myself a gig working in the Press Office for the Cricket World Cup, based at Lord's. I think - although neither of us can remember for sure - that we must have met there; and that, just under a year on, with us both having moved jobs, his was the only name in the racing press that resonated. Whatever the reason, and however cold the call, Alan responded with great interest. He'd be fascinated to see it, he told me. A date was set. Bert and I rocked up to my folks' place, which was a happy half-way house between our Putney office and Alan's Cheltenham home.

We talked him through the product. Bert, in his customary shorts, wilder-haired than he is today (there was a touch more of it then), extolling the virtues of his baby - this exceptional product that had gone from drawing board to launch pad over a period of many months. Alan was wide-eyed at the explanation. Come on then, let's see the real thing. Here it is! Look! Oh no... Sorry... The system's crashed...

The first of our launch parties was in Covent Garden, targeted at (I think) 24 people who we had chanced upon through friends and friends-of-friends as potential clients or potential investors. We went to a small bar which was bizarrely lit in blue, on Shelton Street, I think it was. I can't remember if there were really fish tanks there or whether my memory has now just imagined them, but the whole place had a feel of being under water. It was an unfortunate metaphor, given that before we had even started, we were.

There they were, the High Rollers (as we thought of them then); gathered together in hushed expectation, enticed by news of a ground-breaking product which they were going to be first in the outside world to see. Twenty-four computers set up around the room; state-of-the-art not-quite-flat screens (it was ten years ago); the eerie blue light adding just a frisson of excitement. "Gentlemen, thanks for coming. What you're about to see is going to change the world of gambling. Err... Sorry. The system's crashed."

A day later, we were at the Sports Cafe on Haymarket, showing a rather larger crowd. Anyone we knew from the City was asked along to an evening which we had decided would best generate interest if we staged a mock demonstration outside.

Many people remember our mock funeral which made the front page of the business section of the Sunday Times, when we paraded a coffin around Finsbury Circus and its environs proclaiming, "the bookie is dead - make your own market!". Far fewer remember the demo we arranged outside the Sports Cafe, where a rag-tag-and-bobtail group of actors donned mackintoshes and flat caps, and held up placards saying "stop the launch".

The irony was two-fold: first, some who were invited that night never made it, turning away as they approached and telling us later that there seemed to be some kind of a demonstration going on, and they thought they should keep clear. The second, of course, is all too obvious: at the time, the idea of traditional bookies protesting our existence was all tongue-in-cheek. Little did we realise just how much the bookmaking industry would genuinely line up against us in the years ahead in protest at how competitive we were.

The Sports Cafe launch was the 'official' launch, but it wasn't a whole lot more successful than the private one. Most of my former brokers who came along were baffled by what I'd left JPMorgan for: despite their deep understanding of markets, they didn't see what the demand would be for our product, and told me it would never be more popular than the spreads that they loved (Sprouty, Stokesy - hang your heads in shame!). The system that night was up and down - more up than down admittedly, but it still felt hairy. We were heading towards D-Day with some trepidation.

But D-Day went like a dream. Alan wrote a back-page piece for the Times heralding the start of a new dawn which, he advised in words that went entirely unheeded, people in racing would be wise to notice. The market was posted, and prices went up, in fivers and tenners. We all stood around the computer screen as they appeared and disappeared, placed and matched with slightly more of a delay than they are today. By the time Love Divine was in the winner's enclosure, we were all jumping around in glee. Betfair was up and running!

Funny to think, really.

Queen's Award

I went to a lunch the other day with the chairman of British Airways, Martin Broughton, who was also once the Chairman, of course, of the BHB (as it was then). He was extremely warm and friendly, and made a point of coming to say hello before we sat down, which was kind.

But my reason for mentioning it is not to talk racing, much as that encounter brings thoughts to mind in a week where there has been plenty to discuss. Rather, it was because at the lunch I sat next to someone whose company has just been given the Queen's Award for Enterprise, and as I told him the tale of how we had gone to collect ours back in 2003, I remembered that it was a story that I had said I would blog.

There are two awards ceremonies when you get the prize: one which takes place at your offices, attended by Her Majesty's representative, the Lord Lieutenant; and the other at the palace, where, if you're lucky, you get the Queen herself.

Neither of ours went entirely according to plan, but both are hard to forget.

The Lord Lieutenant's visit to Betfair's offices in Hammersmith took place on a hot summer's day in which we had decamped from the clutter of desks and television screens on the first floor of our office building, to the wide open and uninhabited top floor of the building. The landlord had given us special permission to use the space so that everyone in the office could come and see Bert accept the large glass bowl, which was displayed prominently on top of a pedestal in front of a fairly cheap hoarding of the type you see at convention centre booths.

Because the fourth floor was uninhabited, it had no air conditioning; and with 150-odd people gathered in the airless space, it was quite warm. The room was plenty big enough; but it is surrounded on all sides by big glass windows, and with the sun shining through, it was a bit like being in a greenhouse.

Unfortunately, the Lord Lieutenant was late. And it was getting hotter, and hotter, and hotter. Eventually, someone decided to do the sensible thing: let's open a window.

Er... let's not. Oh. Too late. Just as the Lord Lieutenant comes out of the lift and walks into the room, the window is opened: a rush of air blows through the building, catching the cheap hoarding like a kite, and collapsing it onto the pedestal, which topples over and - crash! - the Queen's Award hits the ground and smashes into a thousand pieces. Ooops. The photo of Bert receiving recognition from the Lord Lieutentant sees them both clutching only the framed certificate confirming its authenticity.

Weeks later, we were off to Buckingham Palace. It was Ed, Bert, and me; and the start was no more auspicious, when, as our car pulled up to the Palace's gates, I realised I hadn't brought my passport, as identification procedures required. But they let me though, somehow, and in we went, led into a large room where other award winners were milling around, and the Queen was being taken round those who, for reasons unknown, had a yellow sticker on their name badges. Ours were plain white.

We took a glass of wine, as offered, surveyed the scene. Bert was hopping from foot to foot, slightly nervously and in need of a pee. Did we know where the loos were, he asked. A door to the right was indicated, and off he sets - no sooner having stepped away from our little group of three than Ed and I clutch each other in horror: in a straight line between us and the door through which Bert will have to pass is Her Maj, with a bodyguard standing just close enough to her to protect her, but just far enough away that in a normal cocktail party, it was a gap you'd happily slip through with a hand on the shoulder and a quick 'excuse me'. Bert was heading straight for it, and we had visions of him being in a half Nelson, on the floor, within seconds. Closer, closer, and closer he got... And at the last minute, he spotted her, and veered away. Crisis averted.

By the time he got back, we were being briefed on what the procedure was for us to go through and formally be congratulated. Speak when spoken to; 'Your Majesty' first time, "ma'am" or "sir" after that; don't be the first to initiate anything. Three rules. Don't forget them.

We joined the queue: Bert leading, Ed next, me bringing up the rear. Bert still hopping foot to foot, even though he'd had his pee. Just as we approach the door, a change of plan: "you go first" he tells me, slightly panicky, and I get pushed through.

Seeing the Queen for the first time in real life is quite an odd experience. It might seem obvious to say so, but she's a little old lady, and it's a bit like standing in front of your granny. Only, for some reason, you're terribly nervous. She extended her gloved white hand and offered her congratulations. "Thank you, Your Majesty," I said, and went on to the Duke.

The Duke was an altogether different proposition, and not just for being about two foot taller. He looked less bored, and he wanted to chat. "Aaah..." he says, in a drawn-out sort of way. "Congratulations! But tell me... what is it exactly that you doooo?"

I thought that there was a long answer to this and a short one. On the basis that he wasn't going to be over-interested in our risk-management processes, I told him, "we're a betting exchange, sir".

"Aaaah!" he said, like he knew all about it in an age where I suspect Harry Findlay had only just heard about us, "a betting exchange!" I half expected him to tell me his mother-in-law would have been a customer had she still been alive.

Ed followed on behind me, and we greeted each other with a smile and a nervous laugh once we we through. And then came Bert, all of a fluster.

"I can't believe it!" he said. "I fluffed my lines!"

"You what?" we asked.

"When I found myself in front of her, I got slightly covered in confusion. So before she had done anything, I thrust my arm forward to shake hands, and said, "hello!""

Happy Anniversary

It's been three thousand, six hundred and fifty-two days, which is 87,648 hours, or two days short of 522 weeks. More traditionally, it's exactly ten years: Tuesday, 2nd May 2000 was the first day I walked, as an employee, through the door of a tiny office in Putney, along from East Putney tube station, to begin the adventure that has been Betfair. It seems incredible to think it.

I'd spent the previous two months reluctantly working my notice in the City, having signed a contract with two enthusiastic Founders on the back of a prototype idea whose execution was eye-poppingly brilliant, and a long-standing desire to get the hell out of a job that didn't suit me. The two Founders, in turn, had spent the same period furiously trying to raise money, and hiring people. Jojo Primrose - the best-named girl outside a Bond film - had agreed to join and started straight away, such that she already had a couple of weeks under her belt; and the picture that has always stuck in my mind of that first morning is of the 6ft 6in Jon Cumberlege, his head almost touching a protruding beam in this tiny and largely empty room, extending a long arm in welcome. He had, it turned out, arrived about ten minutes earlier; but somehow, at the time, he already seemed like an old hand.

The adventure we were embarking on was completely different from anything I ever thought I would do, and despite a naive confidence that we were going to be building a business which we would one day sell for a billion, my expectations were not high that I would be there very long. Partly, that's because Betfair was only meant to be a stepping stone to my goal to be a broadcaster; and partly because this was, after all, the dot.com era: I'm not sure anyone in those days had a time horizon longer than about 36 months.

When I went through the five-year mark and realised that nothing I had ever done in my life had lasted as long as that (five years at pre-prep school; five years at prep; five at senior school; five at university; and four-and-a-half at JPMorgan), I was surprised to have stayed for as long as I had. But now here I am, a further five years on: not quite the old man of the company, but probably a little bit wiser than the 29-year old who walked into the converted Edwardian building called Dunkerry House on Upper Richmond Road, opposite a branch of the Tote that we used to joke (as we went to get our lunchtime sandwiches across the road) had no idea what was about to hit it.

Within a fortnight, it wasn't just Jon who didn't seem to fit in the space we had, and we moved to larger premises at 45, Russell Square. There, there was a room on one floor of a townhouse for the contractors who were writing our code, and then two more upstairs for us: one became an office shared by Jojo, Jon and me; and one had Ed, Bert, our first finance director Sean Paterson (who started as a consultant before signing full-time after our launch), and, a few weeks later, our first legal director, David Williams.

Jon, Jojo and I would joke that theirs was the serious room and ours was the fun one, and on regular occasions they would complain that we were doing nothing but giggling, and say that none of them could concentrate because of the noise coming through the wall. Bert would wander through occasionally and say he wanted to change seats because it sounded more of a laugh with us, and we would throw paper balls at him and tell him to go back to the library.

People often ask me what I think was the secret of Betfair's success, and aside from the obvious answer about the brilliance of the product and its execution, my view is that we had the happiest and arguably most fortuitous combination of people, whose various strengths came to the fore at crucial moments. Whether Ed, who did all the hiring (to the extent that Bert would sometimes wonder if any of his own contacts would ever get a look in), realised just what a combination he was putting together, or whether we all fell into it by chance, I honestly don't know. But what is clear to me is that the complimentary skills of that Founder Team was crucial in making the business a success.

My own contribution in the early days was pretty well zero. The key player, in my view, was Jon, whose can-do attitude and set of organisational skills - both the legacy of his army career - were the main driver, I always felt, in making the first year as effective as it was. Jon had energy which I suspect matched the rest of us put together, and his enthusiasm was infectious. So, too, was his sense of irony and his black humour. The day, late in 2001, when those of us who hadn't been working overnight to try to bring the site up from its longest and most painful outage ever got into work to the unhappy news that we were still down, will never be forgotten: with his hands in the air and his body falling forwards in the mock-dramatisation of a man being shot, Jon greeted us with words, "That's it! It's all over! We're totally and utterly f*cked!"

After the first eighteen months or so, Jon's mantle as the most important player was, in my view, passed to David Williams. I've often been credited with the company's public positioning from late 2001 into '02 - principally with the Morning Line appearance from Lingfield which many have kindly said was transformative in our development, and subsequently in the run-up to the Gambling Act 2005 and the various battles that have come since - but the reality is that I was just a mouthpiece: David had all the ideas, nailed all the arguments, and did all the work. When he first arrived on the scene, we didn't get on terribly well (he even fished Ed out for a drink to ask him why the company didn't just fire me, given that I was adding no value: a fair enough shout, frankly), but we ended up a good double-act: I've never been briefed as effectively as I was by him, and to this day I have his voice ringing in my ears whenever I explain anything about the actual mechanics of our system relative to the marketed product. He set the standard which our exceptional legal department has continued to this day: I don't think we have ever made a bad legal hire.

Of course, the caveat I put at the start ("aside from the obvious answer about the brilliance of the product and its execution") is a huge one. It's easy to forget, now, just how ground-breaking it was; and I've lost count of the number of people who tell me that they'd had the idea before, as if it's something that anyone could have come up with, and Bert just happened to luck out.

It may well be true that plenty of people were thinking about it: the idea that you can effectively (although not actually) take out the middleman and therefore deliver better pricing is hardly revolutionary, and five other competing products being released in a six-week period around our own launch prove that it was front and centre of many minds. But they also prove that it's not the idea that matters, but the way it was executed, and that was Bert's genius. His eureka moment has been well-documented, and probably needs no further embellishment from me.

So, too, has Ed's role, and the tale of how the two of them got together. Ed's biggest strength is analysis: in the face of some now serious competition from some of Betfair's current commercial team, he remains the best analyst of a business that I have worked with, and he'd be the first person I'd speak to if I wanted someone to look at a spreadsheet and point out the cell with the error in it. His attention to strategic detail is microscopic and impressive: it's easy to feel stupid and ill-informed in front of it.

Ten years on, none of the members of that Founder Team remain in an executive capacity, other than me. Ed is our non-Executive chairman, of course, and is often around; and Bert is a non-executive director, although that makes him a very rare visitor. But the others have all moved on.

Jojo, who was behind the coffin-carrying launch that I will perhaps blog about next month when we hit our birthday, left in 2003 and is now a full-time mother in Shropshire, actively supporting a number of charitable causes in whatever time her children leave her spare. Sean departed the same year, and has since spent his time between London and Monaco; a business angel.

Jon went in 2004, and briefly helped a start-up called Glasses Direct before embarking on a new career teaching maths at Whitgift School. And after briefly coming down to Australia, to help Ed and me get the business licensed and set up down there, David left in late '04 to go and work with homeless children, first in Mexico and now in Thailand.

Their replacements, today, have taken up their legacy, inasmuch as Betfair continues to be an exciting and vibrant place to work.

Of course, it's a very different place from that first week: we now have a global headcount north of 1800 people.

But as I celebrated my ten-year anniversary on Friday by taking our Events team out for a long and enjoyable lunch to thank them for having done a brilliant job at Cheltenham this year, I was reminded (if indeed I'd ever forgotten) that while it might be different, Betfair is still, because of its people, what it always was: a lot of fun. The Founder Team can be confident that from the bottom of the company up, their legacy is in good hands.

For my part, I go through ten years much as I went through five: surprised, in a way, but still loving the place and the people I work with. It might be a long time since we started the company, but in relative terms, we're really still only just embarking on a journey. There's a long way for Betfair to go yet.

Just one volcano; and how to get a job.

It's been a busy week, you might think, from the lack of postings.

Well, you'd be wrong. But it's certainly been an odd one. I've spent most of it stuck in Bangkok, between a volcano and a pile of protesters, in a hotel which 'ran out' of internet connection. Such was the price for having gone to the Asian Racing Conference, and not having got out in time. I took off from Sydney on the afternoon of 15th April to the news that a volcano had erupted, and by the time we'd got to Bangkok, it was clear that our one-hour transit might last rather longer. But the sun was out in Thailand, at least, so it could have been worse.

Hats off to British Airways, who proceeded to put us up and feed us. (Passengers with Thai Airways weren't so lucky after the first day: they were apparently told to get their things together, and were taken back to the airport in expectation of getting on a plane. Only when they arrived did they discover that they were just being dumped...) But even bigger hats off to my parents, who held the fort at home with four kids while we awaited news on a 24-hour basis.

When we eventually took off, five days late, it was without knowing where we would be landing. The captain welcomed us aboard 'this flight to as close to London as we can get you', and, as we ticked off city after city on the moving map, updated us with an hour to go: "UK airspace is still closed. It may open up in half an hour, but if it doesn't, we have enough fuel on board to go round in circles for some time until things change." Thankfully, half an hour later, it did. We were one of the first planes to land, late on Tuesday night.

Betfair people were caught all over the globe by the eruption. Our two founders remain stranded - Ed Wray in South Africa, and Andrew Black in Montego Bay - both, at least, with their families. A number of my colleagues on the Executive Board had plans disrupted: Mathias Entenmann, who runs product, is still in California; Tony McAllister, our CTO, had to drive back - albeit only from the South of France; and our Commercial Director, Niall Wass, was (ironically) stuck in London (he lives in Malta). With another non-Exec, Josh Hannah, unable to get across from his home on the Pacific coast, yesterday's Board meeting was rather less crowded than usual. Meanwhile, one of my team, Susannah Gill, had to endure 32 hours by train back from Stockholm, via Hamburg and Brussels (among, presumably, many other places). What fun.

It's fortunate, then, that there doesn't seem to have been a great deal going on this week (just as was apparently true 80 years ago when BBC radio reported that there was 'no news' on 18th April). But in any case, if the ARC finished with a different kind of bang than we might have expected, it was still a well-organised event, and well worth even the extended trip.

I caught up with a number of people including our Australia CEO, Andrew Twaits; breakfasted, lunched, and dined with someone every day, including television presenter Bruce Clarke (whose girlfriend's expecting a baby), Government Relations Australia director Robin Harris (ditto), and former BHB head (and now solid Betfair man) Greg Nichols and his wife Victoria (who I should think have had quite enough of babies, thank you very much).

And on Wednesday night, I grabbed a couple of beers with one of my former hires, Hugh Taggart, who is now based in Sydney with Betfair.

Hugh holds the record for the cockiest approach I've ever had for a job, which I suspect will never be beaten. It remains one of my favourite Betfair stories.

I was sitting minding my own business at my desk in the summer of 2003 when my phone rang. The first words I heard when I picked it up were, "Hi... Mark Davies? My name's Hugh Taggart. I've just arrived from Australia, and I want to work for you."

"I'm sorry?"

"My name's Hugh Taggart. I've just landed from Australia, and I want to work for you. I've been following your story, and I love your business, and I'm hoping you'll give me a job."

You can imagine, I was somewhat taken aback. "What are you going to do if I don't have a job to give you?" I asked.

"Well," he said. "I've got enough money to last me a month. I'll look for another job and if I don't get one, I'll go back home."

It was the July Cup the following day, so I was spending my Saturday heading to Newmarket, by car, and having lunch with a table of interested stakeholders which happened to be a man short. I suggested to Tags that if he could make it to mine by 9am, could manage two hours there and two hours back telling me his story, and hold his own on a table of people he knew nothing about, I'd think about it.

He turned up at 8.55.

I offered him a job on the Monday!

Ten years on...

It was exactly ten years ago yesterday that I quit my last job, at JPMorgan. People often ask me how I first got involved in Betfair, and I can remember the first time I heard anything about it as if it were yesterday, so it seems like a suitable moment to tell the story!

I was sitting at my desk on the trading floor at JPMorgan - a corner desk in the middle of a room about the size of a football pitch - where I had spent most of the last four-and-a-half years surrounded by screens. Down the aisle between two rows of desks stormed one of the Managing Directors in Fixed Income - the man who ran the Syndicate Desk, Paul Hearn.

Paul was someone I had come to watch very carefully, in that way that you study an object of curiosity: he was the sort of person on whose every word you hung, but purely on the basis that it might well be his last. These days he is more relaxed, judging from our chance meeting at a dinner a fortnight back; but at the time, I expected him to have a coronary every time he opened his mouth. And as I sat there minding my own business, I suddenly became aware of him stomping towards his own desk - diagonally across the corner divide from mine - even more buff and bluster than normal.

"ED WRAY'S LEAVING THE COMPANY!" he bellowed to no-one in particular, his arms waving around demonicly. "He's going to set up some sort of BETTING company! Reckons he's got a different way to do it - but haven't these people always got a different way to DO IT!" My ears were caught between wanting cover, and pricking up.

I knew who he was talking about. Edward Wray worked in Capital Markets, bringing new bond issues for various sovereign states. Our interaction was mainly limited to him coming to ask me where comparable bonds traded in the secondary market, to give him an idea where he might price new issues. But we shared a great love for sport, and it was through this shared passion that he had come to rumble me six months earlier (before he headed off on the sabbatical which was spent testing Betfair's business viability) as I sought an exit from the City by moonlighting with the media in the hope of being offered a permanent role.

I'd got myself freelance work writing cricket reports for the Daily Telegraph and reading the sports news for BBC Radio Five Live. Ed had heard me doing late-night and overnight shifts on the radio, and, as one of the very few on the trading floor who read a a white paper rather than a pink one, had, the previous summer, sidled up to my desk with his Telegraph open.

"So, Mark," he said with a wry smile. "There's a report in today's paper on yesterday's county game between Surrey and Somerset, written by Mark Davies, the day after you were off sick. Is this coincidence, given that last week, the day after you took a day's leave, there was another report by Mark Davies, on the match between Nottinghamshire and Middlesex?" I'd had to admit it was a fair cop.

It became increasingly clear over the months that passed that it would be unsustainable for me to pursue my media ambitions while working in the City - a fact brought home to me, as I walked up towards Fleet Street from our office on Victoria Embankment after the markets closed for New year 2000, to have my senior salesman put his arm round my shoulder and wish me a change of luck with the new Millenium. "I've never known someone have as rough as trot as you've had in '99, Mark," he told me. "Three members of your family, and two friends die; and so much illness? Things can only get better for you, mate."

So it was music to my ears, soon after Paul Hearn had announced to anyone within half a mile that Ed was off to set up a business, when Ed suggested to me that his new venture might be my answer. It was, after all, a fledgling business; who knew if it would go anywhere; and, he told me, if I made any significant progress in pursuit of my dream of presenting for BBC Sport, we could always come to some arrangement where I could take unpaid leave if I was offered too many days to be able to have as holiday. He wanted someone who understood business, he said, which he presumed I did as I was trading corporate bonds; and - in case his business took off - he needed someone who knew the media. That, he was right in saying, was where I was spending increasing amounts of my time; and it was, in any case, the industry I had grown up with. Would I, he asked, be interested in having a conversation?

I didn't need any persuasion: I agreed to go and see the product, and talk about the idea. And so, a short time later, I went one evening to a small attic room in Putney, without any desks, and with one computer perched on one of the many boxes which constituted the only furniture, to meet Ed and his business partner, Andrew Black. How Andrew (or Bert, as he is known) had come out with the idea and given half of it to Ed has been well documented. Also there that evening was Sean Paterson, who at the time was offering his services on a consultancy basis as Ed and Bert, but who later became the company's first CFO.

Bert gave me a quick demo of the product, as it existed then. As I remember it, it was nothing more than an Excel spreadsheet at the time, although my knowledge of software packages is not deep. Whatever, it certainly didn't have any bells and whistles.

But it didn't need any. I remember exactly what my reaction was: it was, I thought, so simple, and so well-executed; I couldn't believe I hadn't thought of it myself. And the thought flashed through my mind that if one in a hundred people reacted to it as I had just reacted to it, the concept was going to fly.

Exactly what the timescale was between that moment and me resigning from Morgan, I am not certain. It feels in my head like I quit the following morning, but there must have been things to work out. Whatever, I handed in my notice on 2nd March 2000, at the time much to the envy of many of my colleagues, who told me that they wished they had the balls to do the same. That sentiment changed within a matter of weeks, though: the NASDAQ peaked on 10th March, and shortly after, lastminute.com's share price collapsed, heralding the bursting of the dot.com bubble.

It was a hairy time. Not that I got any sympathy from any of my City colleagues, who thought it was the most hilarious thing that I had quit to join a start-up, leaving a very lucrative job, with such impeccable timing. I had a rush of e-mails from "friends" (!) with mocked-up P45s, and repeated comments that they would buy the Big Issue off me providing I sold it on Blackfriars' Bridge, just outside the office. To make matters worse, I must be the only trader in history to have been asked to work his notice: normally, they march you out of the door there and then. Either they thought I wouldn't do any damage, or I couldn't do any more than I regularly did already. Or maybe it was genuinely the case that they had no-one else spare to make a price.

Looking back, the success of Betfair makes it easy to forget just how un-obvious it was to an awful lot of sensible people that it would work; and just how big a risk it was at the time. At our launch party at the Sports Cafe, to which I invited all my former brokers and many a big City punter, we were repeatedly told it would never beat spread betting, which they all knew and loved. Meanwhile, six companies launched in a six-week period with the same idea: disintermediate the risk between your customers rather than taking it on yourself, and you can deliver far better pricing. Five of the six (one of which was Coral's offering, Play2Match - conveniently forgotten by the bookies today!) no longer exist; and Bert's model, with its order-driven trading and best execution, came through. Every attempt to enter the market today skins itself remarkably similarly to Betfair, as 'the only way to do it' - as if it's obvious. It wasn't so obvious at the time!

More on letters

I commented the other day that William Hill's David Hood had done more than any other person, in my view, to promote Betfair.

But today's letters page of today's Racing Post points out that he hasn't been alone among the traditional bookmakers in being able to claim some credit for Betfair's success.

Andrew Henderson from Nottingham writes as follows:

"From my experience with all major layers, no matter what you ask for at early odds on any event, your request is without exception referred to a trader before invariably comes, "Sir, I can only offer £25 at those odds but you can have the rest at SP."

I would say Mr. Benson was very lucky to get £200, particularly each-way.

These incidents happen daily, hence the migration to Betfair."

It is certainly true that the reason Betfair was set up is that the gap between what punters wanted and what they were being given grew ever larger; and we simply filled it. Indeed, our founder, Andrew Black, came up with the idea precisely because he was a frustrated punter. It's one of the great ironies of the debate with the bookies that they helped make us what we are.

Incidentally, we remain acutely aware of that fact today, and of what the effect would be, were we to open a similar gap ourselves. That is why - despite what some think (and therefore the perception that we sometimes manage, unfortunately, to create) - we are by no means complacent as a business (to an earlier debate on this blog).