Q. When was the company founded and who are the founders?
The company was founded in March 2001, and is a product of the US based incubator idealab! It is one of the ideas created during Bill Gross' famous brainstorming sessions.

Q. Where is the company based?
The company has recently moved out of the Idealab! incubator facilities, into Sherman Oaks in LA and has European Headquarters in London.

Q. What is your role?
My job title is Director of Marketing & Policy - Marketing for New.net Europe, and Policy for the whole company.

Q. What is your core business?
Introducing relevant, meaningful and easy-to-remember domain name extensions in response to market demand from Internet users. This breaks the logjam in the domain name industry, making new domain names such as www.pie.shop or www.smith.family available for the first time.

Q. How does it work?
New.net partners with ISPs to provide access to New.net domain names for all that ISP's customers. New.net's approach works alongside the system run by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). For those Internet users who use an ISP not yet working with New.net, there is a small download which enables your individual PC to see New.net domain names.

Q. Who are your partners?
New.net has partnered with 5 of the top 7 ISP's in the US: EarthLink, Prodigy, Juno, NetZero and the @Home network. New.net has also partnered with Energis Squared, the major UK backbone provider (which covers 60 residential ISPs in the UK including Freeserve), Tutopia, one of the leading ISPs in Latin America and has recently signed a deal with Tiscali.

Q. What differentiates you in the market?
Our market responsive approach. We are completely governed by market demand for top-level domain name extensions. We believe that Internet users are the best people to choose what domain name extensions should exist, and we satisfy this huge market demand by releasing relevant, meaningful and logical extensions like .shop and .family as alternatives to extensions with less meaning such as .com and .net.

Q. What market research did you undertake?
Market research is integral to our business. We undertook substantial research prior to March as to what extensions were likely to be in demand. Our whole business model is based on market research, and ensuring that we release extensions in response to the market and the Internet users we provide for.

Q. You have previously been seen as a threat/renegade company by the Internet authority ICANN, how has this been resolved?
ICANN has an extremely hard job; but many agree that it has failed to listen to the consensus of Internet user opinion that new meaningful domain name extensions are badly needed to reduce the artificial scarcity that leads to companies buying unwieldy names like www.sportsintheuk-london.com; New.net's success proves that people want more choice. We are not a threat to ICANN; indeed we go to every ICANN meeting and engage in dialogue with all the elements of ICANN. New.net is not a competitor to ICANN, but rather a response to a partial failure of the ICANN process. It is true to say that our relationship issues with ICANN have not been fully resolved, but we continue to work through some of those issues within the ICANN forum. ICANN's authority is challenged when it does not reflect the wishes of Internet users - and New.net is an inevitable response to market demand.

Q. ICANN has recently announced seven new domain names, how does this impact your business?
The fact that only 7 new domain name extensions have been launched is not encouraging, especially in light of the fact that far more relevant names had been suggested and rejected. It does help us at New.net as it highlights that there's more than .com, .net etc available. However, we believe that the 7 new extensions are not ones that will necessarily be of interest to consumers.

Q. How does it work if ICANN wants to create a domain name already available from New.net?
The lack of progress in releasing names means that it is unlikely that any more will be released by ICANN in the next few years, by which time New.net will have an extensive network of domain name extensions being used freely in the Internet. I would imagine that ICANN would not choose domain name extensions that are already part of New.net.

Q. You have launched some European language domain name extensions already, where next?
The first phase of our strategy was for English language domain name extensions; the next phase was the creation of European language domain name extensions, which we now have in Spanish, French, Portuguese, German and Italian. The third phase is to develop domain name extensions in character sets such as Chinese (available in Q1 2002), Kanji and Hindi. We are currently rolling out domain name extensions in Japanese and Korean character sets.

Q. What do you think will have the biggest influence on the development of your company?
Ultimately it has to be consumer demand for domain names. In order to facilitate that, its vital we partner with ISPs across the globe.

Q. How do you see the future?
In the future, people will understand that the Internet is an underlying infrastructure and it will change the way people think about information & communication, which shall be accessed and used in many different ways. People will stop talking about the Internet as something amazing and it will become imbedded in our lives, I think this is beginning to happen already. What the Internet offers will become all-pervasive, emerging as something fundamental to human interaction.

Q. What was your lucky break?
I'm not sure that luck really has a lot to do with things, but my biggest breakthrough was when I joined idealab! It was fantastic to go from a large, unwieldy insurance firm to a company that was all about creating nimble, fast moving, customer focussed companies. I remember one of the Insurance company's Directors actually being proud of using the analogy of the Tanker for Insurance companies: big, strong, robust and slow moving. Give me a speedboat any day!

Q. What's your motivation to work?
Having worked with start-ups, I couldn't work for a company I didn't feel passionate about. I enjoy the dynamic energy of this business.

Q. What or who has been the biggest influence on your life?
The most important thing for me is maintaining a balance and getting into the highlands, getting into the hills. I have climbed mountains in Pakistan, Scotland, Azerbaijan etc… They influence and inspire me, as instruments of regeneration.

Q. What is the most interesting & most challenging part of your job?
Going to ICANN meetings! It was a real challenge to go to their meeting in Stockholm last June in the knowledge that we would face opposition in a hostile environment; and then to take each person aside to explain what our business is and why we are not a threat to the Internet. It is fascinating to be working for a company that's ahead of the curve, and which could change the future development of the Internet. I find it highly challenging and exciting to be working in such a controversial area of an industry; it's an amazing feeling, a real roller-coaster ride.

Q. What do you feel has been your greatest personal achievement?
So far, one of my greatest achievements was getting to the top of Rash Peak, near Rakaposhi(7,788m) in the Karakoram range, Northern Pakistan. I feel my greatest personal achievement is yet to come.

Q. Who would you most like to meet?
Richard Burton - he's a great example of someone who could lie on his deathbed and say that he lived life to the full and gave it his all. And I'd love to know what really went on behind the scenes during the filming of Cleopatra.