Business Connections is signing up sponsors who flag the PEmail service on their Website. If a new user signs up for PEmail from a sponsor's site, every time he or she goes to the PEmail Website to pick up mail or change forwarding address, he sees the sponsor's logo. That lasts for three months, so everyday for three months sponsors get their name in front of people who have already shown an interest in their Website. The logo on the PEmail Website is also a link back to the sponsor's site.
By now you may be kicking yourself and asking "why didn't I think of that?" or maybe feeling a little inadequate. If so you'll be relieved to know that Grice hasn't engineered all these neat business ideas entirely on his own. "One of the things I lacked was business experience, so to help we've recruited David Dey, who created Energis (the telecomms company owned by what was the National Grid), and Howard Yates, another ex-Energis board director."
Dey, Yates and Grice have raised ú1 million for the launch, much of which will be spent on promoting the services to new subscribers. In the first year PEmail aims to have half a million trial subscribers, 150,000 using the basic forwarding service and 25,000 using the full service. And a bunch of sponsors adding more subscribers and more sponsorship money.
If all goes according to plan, in a few years time Personal Email will be huge and successful. Grice is only 27 and has a brain the size of a moderate sized planet, so what are his long-term goals?
"To solve the transport problems of over-populated industrialised countries," he replies, matter-of-factly.
Oh right, no big ambitions then? How will he do that?
"With airships. But that's another story. Let's get PEmail off the ground first."
But why airships?
"If you think about the transport problems we have in crowded cities, about the conflict between conventional private and public sector transport solutions, then take a fleet of privately funded airships and apply the functions they can provide to some of the problems, you have some solutions."
Just like ordinary people's communications needs, the Net and PEmail?
"Precisely."
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