Iomart founder in new e-mail venture

IOMART founder Bill Dobbie is joining Scottish internet pioneers Andrew Veitch and Clare Scrivener in an e-mail management company, Logicalware.

Dobbie has invested 50,000 in the company and will join as a non-executive director alongside chief executive Veitch and partner Scrivener, who have been working on a new type of e-mail system for two years.

Sigma, the private equity company, will invest a further 250,000 in Logicalware, which is based in Musselburgh, through its Sigma Innovation Fund.

Dobbie and Veitch first crossed paths in 2000 when Iomart, the Glasgow internet and software company, bought NSL, one of Scotland's first internet firms. Dobbie was business development director of Iomart until last year and resigned as a non-executive director on Monday.

Veitch said: "It is great to have Bill's investment, but the biggest thing for us is having him work a day a month here and going on the board."

Peter George, the former head of engineering at Iomart, has also joined Logicalware as vice-president of open source. George was one of the main architects of Iomart's e-mail and messaging system, ThinkMail.

Veitch and Scrivener set up a consultancy, Logical Progession, in 2002, to advise small businesses on how to use the internet profitably. That company developed an e-mail system, MailManager, and was last week re-named Logicalware to coincide with the investments from Dobbie and Sigma.

The cash will be used to create some of the 100-plus features which have been suggested by MailManager users.

Logicalware's e-mail software was created using open source software techniques that involved 1,000 users from 20 countries creating features and eliminating glitches. Veitch said Sigma's investment was "the first venture capital investment in an open source software company in the UK".

Veitch's company recently moved from Edinburgh to Musselburgh to take advantage of development area rules which restrict where Sigma can invest. The company employs five people and has customers in the UK, the US and France.

Dobbie set up Iomart with chief executive Angus MacSween in 1998. He gained 2.64m in February when he sold 2m shares in Iomart, which announced its first dividend last month. Dobbie retains a 4.7% stake in Iomart.

Dobbie and MacSween are partners in The DVD Biz, a company which operates the DVDs365.com online DVD rental firm. Earlier this year The DVD Biz bought three rival online film rental businesses for a six-figure sum.