The origins of Sift lie with the founders Andrew Gray, David Gilroy and myself. Andrew was running CompuServe in the UK (where David also worked), whilst I’d qualified as an accountant with KPMG and had entrepreneurial leanings. I knew Andrew as I’d studied psychology at Bristol University with his wife Katharine, and whenever we met during the early 90s we talked business. After a couple of false dawns, we bumped into each other at the Online Information show at Olympia in December 1995 and with Andrew now ready to leave CompuServe, we were set to go. We formed Sift in July 1996, after much debate about the name – there was discussion about it being called Double Helix! The initial aim was to set up industry-specific information services that took advantage of the Internet by integrating traditional news, databases and Internet content. With my background, we decided to start with the accountancy market.
