Bright Station is the vehicle through which British technology entrepreneur Dan Wagner has built technology businesses, backed founders and supported the wider entrepreneurial community.
The businesses span four decades and four generations of technology: online information before the web, enterprise eCommerce delivered as a service, mobile commerce and now artificial intelligence for commerce. Each was built in Britain and taken to international markets.
What Bright Station does
01
Dan Wagner has founded and led technology companies continuously since 1984, from MAID and The Dialog Corporation to Venda, Powa and Rezolve Ai. Bright Station is the private company that has sat behind that work since 2000.
The record02
Through Bright Station Ventures, and through Dan's own capital and board time, Bright Station has backed founders at the earliest stage, most visibly Buyapowa in 2011 and a group of consumer internet companies in 2007. It does not run a fund or an application programme.
How Bright Station works with founders03
Public advocacy for British technology exports, sponsorship of student entrepreneurship, and the practical help of an operator who has taken two companies to Nasdaq. Only activities that can be documented are described here.
Enterprise & ImpactThe thread
The businesses connected with Bright Station share a pattern. Each took a category that was about to matter, built the software for it in Britain, and sold it to customers abroad before the category had a settled name. MAID sold online business information to corporate researchers from 1985, when 'online' meant a dial-up terminal. Venda ran retailers' online shops as a shared, hosted service from 2001, years before the phrase 'software as a service' was in common use. Powa set out in 2007 to make any advertisement shoppable from a phone. Rezolve Ai, founded in 2016, builds the infrastructure that lets AI systems search, sell and settle on behalf of merchants.
Two of those companies were admitted to Nasdaq, MAID in 1995 and Rezolve Ai in 2024. Two were sold to large American groups: Dialog's information business to Thomson in 2000, and Venda to NetSuite in 2014. One, Powa, entered administration in 2016; its central idea was carried forward by Rezolve. Each story is told on its own page, with its outcome stated plainly.
The businesses
Status checked against public records, 24 September 2026.
MAID and The Dialog CorporationOnline business information
Historical
VendaHosted enterprise e-commerce
Exited
AttraqtSearch and merchandising software for online retail
Former
Powa TechnologiesMobile commerce and payments
Historical
BuyapowaReferral marketing software
Former
Rezolve AiAI infrastructure for commerce
Current
Current focus
Dan's principal operating role today is at Rezolve Ai plc, the Nasdaq-listed company he founded in 2016 to build AI infrastructure for commerce. It is an independent public company, described here because it is where the thread of Bright Station's work currently runs.
Figures are the company's own, from its results announcement of 1 September 2026.
Founder
Dan founded MAID at twenty, floated it in London at thirty and on Nasdaq at thirty-two, and has founded or chaired every business on this site. He is today Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Rezolve Ai plc. His full biography, writing and press archive are on his personal site.