Charles Black - Nasstar

Charles Black always knew he wanted to run his own business. He was so convinced that he would one day build a company that he initially decided not to go to university and follow what he calls ‘a conventional path’. Instead, he says, he was going to be a ‘superstar’ and started out managing bands.

It is a world away from his current role. Nasstar, the AIM-quoted technology company he launched over a decade ago, is winning customers over with its internet-hosted desktop computing. The entrepreneur believes that providing desktop computing over the ‘cloud’ is a fast growing market and the company is entirely dedicated to developing this part of the business. “One lesson I have learnt is to focus on one thing and do it well. And that one thing has to be simple and scalable,” says Black.

Nasstar, which started life as Space Internet, ticks both these boxes: it gives customers the ability to cut costs by managing their computing over the internet, and it works equally well for a 10-user company as it does for 1,000 users.

Making the leap from the world of music to the internet ended up involving three years at university. Early rejections from the record industry persuaded Black that he should learn a trade so that he would have a career to fall back on. So he trained to be a barrister in London. “I felt relieved that I had the shelter of university – and taking the law degree eased my conscience after my parents had invested in my schooling. I felt I was repaying them by doing something sensible,” he says.

But Black never lost sight of his aim to run his own business. At the age of 18 he had decided that what he really wanted to do was create a global news channel about space. He was inspired by stories of successful entrepreneurs such as Fred Brown, the founder of Tip Top Drugstores who lived in the same village as Black and sold the 110-strong chain to Superdrug.

But it was his new channel that spurred him onwards. It was such a motivation that Black wrote a legal paper on video on the internet when he was at university called ‘A human right to broadcast’. It was published two years later in 1996, and was ahead of its time – explaining that the future would be distributing content over the internet. 

Black completed his degree, but by 1998 he was back on track and set up Space Internet. It was early days for the internet, so he decided that he would design and host websites which would give him enough money to start developing corporate videos on the net.

Demonstrating the complete confidence with which he approaches every aspect of his work, Black targeted barristers and won his first contract – but had absolutely no idea how to build a website. So he taught himself HTML coding in two weeks, shot the pictures for the website himself, delivered on his first contract, and he was in business. “I never doubted it would work for even a nanosecond,” he says. “Failure never comes into my thought patterns.”

While he was developing Space Internet Black teamed up with Jason Drummond, one of the dotcom pioneers and founder of Virtual Internet. He took the opportunity to be involved in the creation of an internet incubator that floated on AIM. They did a share swap so Black took a stake in the company that eventually became Gaming Corporation, and Drummond took a stake in Space Internet. The new company floated on AIM through a reverse takeover. The dotcom crash altered the strategy and the focus was squarely on gaming. It was a shrewd move, anticipating the booming industry to come.

Black remained as an executive director and shareholder of Gaming Corporation, which became hugely successful. Black re-invested a lot of the money he made into Nasstar, and finally exited Gaming Corporation after a successful £14m share placing in March 2005.

In 2002 he bought Space Internet back for a nominal sum and renamed it Nasstar. “I thought the next phase was going to be hosted emails, shifting from local machines to the web,” he says, once against demonstrating his knack of spotting new trends early. “It was an exciting idea.”

In 2005 Nasstar floated on AIM, which got Black the stock market quote NASA, and he wrote his first ever business plan in the process. “I wanted to be the only AIM company that specialised in hosted desk top applications. If you are the only one in a growing market you get traction,” he says.

The AIM float has also given Nasstar the sort of credibility far larger companies enjoy, and it suits Black who has led the company to punch above its weight. For example Nasstar won a contract with Nasdaq quoted Allied Healthcare.

Black is fully focused on growing Nasstar over the next few years. But he has finally found the time to lay the foundations for SEN – short for Space Exploration Network – which he hopes will one day be developed into a dedicated space television channel. It could be that he has just identified the next big trend.

Nasstar is offering Entrepreneur Country members a 30 day trial and a substantial discount on new subscriptions.  Click here for details.

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