The company was going through a period of change and this made me think about my future. I was 44 and I had been with Taxan 18 years. I owned my own house and had money in the bank so I realised I was in a position to do something myself”.

Chappell had enormous experience in the computer industry and so staying within it seemed an obvious choice. Pre-Taxan he joined Apple in 1979 when the brand was in its infancy and was just setting up in the UK.

It didn’t take long for Chappell to find the right project to kick-start his entrepreneurial hunger. In the summer of 2003 he met Riyad Emeran, the former Editor-in-Chief of Personal Computer World Magazine. Together they established TrustedReviews.com, a website providing expert reviews on a broad range of computer and technology products including PCs, laptops, digital cameras, mobile phones, TVs and MP3 players. Emeran plus a team of professional editors and journalists would create the content. Chappell would back the project and run it. This included the most important bit, generating revenue!

“I put a significant amount of my own money into the project and gave up my job. Suddenly it was goodbye salary, bonus, company car, petrol, private health care, life insurance and pension. For the first time in my career I had no income.

I lived and breathed TrustedReviews.com. I worked seven days per week and looked after every aspect of the business (apart from editorial). I even got my wife to clean the office! 

The business reached profitability quite quickly and Chappell continually re-invested to increase content output. TrustedReviews.com became the most successful online publication in the sector.

Chappell then set his sights on another business opportunity, bit-tech.net, an online publication for computer enthusiasts run a group of university students. It had built a significant reader base but lacked the attributes of a commercial operation.

“I wanted to buy bit-tech.net but there were some doubts from my colleagues at TrustedReviews.com. For the first time in my life I realised I could make the decision (to buy bit-tech.net) without having to consult anybody else and so I went ahead and acquired it.”

By the summer of 2007, TrustedReviews.com and bit-tech.net were clear market leaders in their sectors with a combined readership of more than 2.5 million unique visitors per month to the websites. Chappell’s debut start-ups began to attract potential buyers.

“At this point I wasn’t planning to sell the business however I suddenly had a couple of unsolicited offers, one from a well known American company, which made me realise that the business was not only very valuable but that perhaps now was the right time to sell. I decided to appoint a M&A company, Fusion Corporate Partners to handle the offers and importantly to approach the market for additional buyers”

After several hectic weeks of meeting potential buyers and considering their offers Chappell sold TrustedReviews.com in October 2007 to Time Warner/IPC Media.

“I remember at the point of signing, I hesitated. I had this tinge of 'I’m selling my baby'. I realised I was going to miss the company, my staff and my customers. It was my life. But then I realised that I had completed the mission that I had set out to accomplish. I had reached the finish line. I had done it!"

In October 2008, a year to the day later, Chappell’s fortune’s swelled again after selling bit-tech, again for another undisclosed sum. This time the buyer was Dennis Publishing, the most successful publisher in the technology sector.

A six-month hand-over period followed but rather than retire to the golf course, Chappell (who is now only 51) jokes about why he couldn’t stay still for long.

“Suddenly I was 'minister without portfolio' and so I immediately started work on 'what’s next?' In no big headed way I knew I didn’t have to work again but, because I’d worked seven days a week for so many years, I had no hobbies, apart from work. If I spent all day around the house I would annoy my wife and vice versa.”

“I needed a different conveyor belt to jump onto so I joined a number of investment clubs and immersed myself within the start-up community, mentoring at SeedCamp, Launch 48 and Entrepreneur Country. I also networked extensively in order to find new opportunities.”

The end of 2009 and beginning of 2010 has seen a flurry of activity with Chappell having invested in a series of companies which he claims allow him to work 35 'part-time' hours a week.

Lovestruck.com is a dating site for professional city singles and is successful in London, Dublin, Hong Kong and Singapore. There’s also Net Communities, Europe’s leading technology and business community advertising network and THINQ.co.uk, a brand new publication that redefines the technology news landscape by unearthing and investigating daily breaking new stories.

Chappell also mentors several start-up businesses and is an Advisor to the Board of Directors at Time Out Group.

Reflecting on the many decisions that have led him to this point he concludes: “I’m so pleased that I made it to the finish line (with both TrustedReviews.com and bit-tech.net) because, when you look at this world of entrepreneurship and start-ups, the number of people who’ve actually started and sold their businesses are few. At the end of the day I’m the person who was prepared to give up the relatively safety of employment, invest my own money and to take a risk. Although timing is very important, it is also about hard work and total dedication.

Hugh Chappell was a keynote speaker at the January 2010 Entrepreneur Country forum.  We recorded a video interview with him following the theme of the day - Politics Not As Usual.