Journeying the skies

GARETH Williams' regular visits to the French Alps, where his brother worked as a ski instructor, often left the Briton frustrated. "If there's one thing the Internet should be good at, it's comprehensive information," says the 48-year-old, who was then living in London. "But I couldn't ascertain from which of the five London airports all these European low-cost carriers fly. I couldn't find which of the alpine airports they go to and which ones would work for me. I had to access several sites before getting the information I needed. It was exasperating that there wasn't a single place to go to for the information," he laments. Frustration, the mother of creativity, drove the software developer to build himself a tool. "It probably took me 20 hours to build the tool, and it saved me half an hour of time each time of searching for the flight I wanted," he says. Mr Williams reveals it was then that he realised that what he created, with just one Excel spreadsheet, had "the power to, for a certain amount of work, be useful for lots of people".

So, in 2001, along with co-founders Bonamy Grimes and Barry Smith, he started Skyscanner, turning what started as an idea and one Excel spreadsheet into a site that compares flight prices for every airline in the world.

But the trio did not have any idea how they would be making money from their "baby", Mr Williams says.