jon@morby:~$ cat career.log

Forty years, one story.

Every era of the internet, seen from the machine room. Newest chapters are still being written.

What's next

Amperlo

2026 — present
now

Founder · United Kingdom

Amperlo is the current startup: an app that gives electric-vehicle drivers honest numbers. Log charges and mileage and see your real cost per mile; photograph a receipt and AI extracts the kWh and VAT; compare what you're actually spending against petrol; track maintenance and trips; and, for business drivers, generate VAT-reclaim reports that stand up to an accountant.

It's early days — built with the same reliability-first instincts as everything else on this page.

  • Charge and mileage logging with real cost-per-mile
  • AI-powered receipt parsing: kWh and VAT extracted automatically
  • VAT-reclaim reporting for business use
amperlo.com ↗

Building for the long run

FXRM

2025 — present
now

Founder · United Kingdom

After selling the ISP in 2019 I tried retirement — bought a boat, started a YouTube channel, became an ordinary customer of the services I'd spent decades building. What I found was a market so broken I couldn't stay out of it. FXRM is the result.

Founded in 2025, FXRM is a UK-owned, UK-operated hosting company building on best-in-class infrastructure — our own servers, agile about what works for us: web, reseller and WordPress hosting, VPS, secure email, DNS and domains. Alongside the hosting we build and publish software — DMARC Sentinel's free email-authentication audits, RBL monitoring, and modules for the Blesta billing platform.

  • UK-owned and operated, building on best-in-class infrastructure
  • Published products including DMARC Sentinel and RBL Toolbox
  • Blesta platform modules: Zimbra provisioning, CRM, accounting integrations
fxrm.com ↗

Building for the long run

Tula Networks

2025 — present
now

Founder · United Kingdom

Tula Networks is intelligent load balancing for modern infrastructure: sub-millisecond routing, automatic health checks and instant failover, TLS termination with automated certificates, and support for everything from HTTP and gRPC to raw TCP and UDP — built on proven open-source foundations like HAProxy, nftlb and gdnsd.

It's built from the ground up on years of experience that runs from F5 in the early days, through HAProxy and BalanceNG in production, to a brief stint at loadbalancer.org as a solutions architect. Tula is what all of that taught me a load balancer should be.

  • Sub-millisecond routing with automatic failover and a 99.99% SLA
  • HTTP, HTTPS, TCP, UDP, gRPC and WebSocket support
  • Built on decades of load-balancing experience: F5, HAProxy, BalanceNG, loadbalancer.org
tulanetworks.com ↗

Building for the long run

Fido.Net

2001 — 2019

Founder & Managing Director · London

In August 2001 I founded FidoNet Registration Services Ltd, taking the near-dormant fido.net operation — fewer than twenty customers — and building it into a UK ISP and hosting business serving thousands: leased lines, colocation, bonded and FTTC broadband, cloud, hosted email with spam and virus filtering, domains and DNS, running its own network on AS8282 and AS9179 with LINX ConneXions available at every site.

Eighteen years later, in 2019, I sold the business and tried retirement. It didn't take.

  • Grew from fewer than 20 customers to thousands over 18 years
  • Ran its own network: AS8282 and AS9179, LINX ConneXions at all sites
  • Accredited FireBrick dealer; sold the business in 2019
www.fido.net ↗

The dot-com boom

Redbus Interhouse PLC

2001 — 2001

Head of European Operations · London & Europe

Reconnecting with Cliff Stanford — this time as co-founder of Redbus Interhouse PLC — I served as Head of European Operations, overseeing fourteen data centres spread across nine countries. Carrier-neutral colocation at serious scale, at the height of the boom, until the pull of running my own ship won out after around eighteen months across the dot-com years.

  • 14 data centres across 9 countries
  • Head of European Operations

The dot-com boom

Interactive Investor International (iii)

2000 — 2000

Systems Administrator, then Operations Manager · London

After Demon's acquisition by Scottish Telecom I moved to The Interactive Investor PLC, then a fast-moving trading startup — joining as Systems Administrator and rising to Operations Manager, responsible for the operation of the iii website and internet trading systems across the UK, Hong Kong and South Africa. Mission-critical services from real-time stock trading through to stock alerts: real money, real markets, zero tolerance for downtime.

  • Promoted from Systems Administrator to Operations Manager
  • Ran online trading systems across three continents
  • Mission-critical real-time trading and alerting services

Building for the long run

Redmail

1996 — present
now

Founder · United Kingdom

Founded in 1996, Redmail has been providing hosted email to the masses since before Gmail was a glint in anyone's eye — pioneering consumer webmail when most people were still collecting POP3 over dial-up.

Nearly three decades on it's still going strong: Zimbra-powered hosted mailboxes with modern webmail, calendars and mobile sync, run with the same keep-the-mail-flowing discipline as everything else on this timeline.

  • Providing hosted email continuously since 1996
  • Pioneering consumer webmail years before Gmail launched in 2004
  • Still going strong today on a modern Zimbra platform
redmail.com ↗

Dial-up Britain

Demon Internet

1993 — 2000

Advanced Technologies Manager · Birmingham & London

Recruited by Demon's founder Cliff Stanford — who had also sponsored the fido.net gateway — in the era when "tenner a month" internet access changed everything in the UK. I ran Demon's Birmingham Point of Presence from 1993 to 1995, moved to London to supervise the rapidly growing technical support team, and went on to run the entire Demon Mail system serving more than 100,000 paying customers.

Promoted to senior management as Advanced Technologies Manager in 1997, responsible for next-generation systems, before leaving in January 2000.

  • Ran the Birmingham Point of Presence, 1993–1995
  • Ran the Demon Mail system for 100,000+ paying customers
  • Advanced Technologies Manager from 1997, working on next-generation systems

The BBS years

FidoNet

1985 — 1994

Gateway Operator & Echomail Hub · Birmingham

Before the web, there was FidoNet — a worldwide network of amateur bulletin board systems linked by late-night modem calls. Having first stepped into IT in 1982, from 1985 to 1994 I ran the fidonet.org ↔ Internet gateway on a non-profit basis, one of the main routes by which email and echomail moved between the UK, the US and Europe.

By day I was a Registered Representative and trader at the Birmingham Stock Exchange; by night, store-and-forward networking, routing politics, and keeping infrastructure alive on a shoestring. Everything it taught me still applies — the internet just got faster.

  • One of the UK & Europe's primary email and echomail importers for the FidoNet network
  • Operated the fidonet.org ↔ Internet gateway from 1985 to 1994, non-profit
  • First stepped into IT in 1982; traded at the Birmingham Stock Exchange by day

--- EOF (for now)