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At 18, Muirhead arranged the management buyout of a musical-equipment rental business.
At 20, he dropped out of London’s Imperial College to launch Orchestream (www.orchestream.com), which makes software to configure routers and switches without the need for an army of technical specialists.
Customers include telecom operators such as AT&T, Cable & Wireless and Global Crossing. Muirhead stepped down from Orchestream’s day-to-day management when the company went public on the London Stock Exchange in June 2000, but he still serves as a member of the board.
Muirhead moved on to help start iGabriel (www.igabriel.net), a global network of angel investors (including Internet doyenne Esther Dyson and rock star Peter Gabriel) to provide seed money to start-ups.
Among iGabriel’s high profile investments: Open Business Exchange (see Alain Falys, No. 22) and Sourceree, which offers a Web-based supply-chain management system. Now Muirhead is preparing to launch his latest venture, InterProvider, which supplies proprietary software and service interconnections to telecom operators. This will allow them to offer large corporate customers the advantages of a virtual private network without having to expand — or build — their own international facilities.
After InterProvider, Muirhead will doubtless start something else. He’s only 26.
The Vision Thing: "When we get going, InterProvider will redefine the economics of the telecom industry."
Forward Spin: InterProvider will launch next year, first in Europe, then in the U.S. and Asia.
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