Type the word “games” into Google and top of the resulting list of 1.44bn hits comes Miniclip.com. That is a sign of the popularity among internet users that this London-based company has achieved since starting up on a budget of £40,000 ($73,000, €50,000) seven years ago.

The internet may now be awash with free and user-generated content, but such concepts were much more radical when Rob Small and Tihan Presbie set out to create an internet company from a flat near London’s financial centre in St Katherine’s Dock in 2001.