British Internet pioneer Cliff Stanford died on 24 February at his home in Estonia aged 67.

Stanford was a co-founder of Demon Internet, the first Internet Service Provider in the United Kingdom for individual subscribers.

He also founded Redbus Investments, which help fund early data center colocation businesses, including Redbus Interhouse.

Redbus Interhouse was acquired by rival Telecity Group in 2006. After nearly a decade of further acquisitions and growth, Telecity was itself acquired by US data center company Equinix.

Stanford crowdfunded the launch of Demon Internet in 1992 on an Internet chatroom system called CIX. He asked users to send him a cheque in the post, with 130 people sending him £120 - helping him raise enough to buy a £10,000, 64kbps leased line, and a single Apricot 486 machine with eight modems.

Soon business at Demon was booming, and it had 230,000 subscribers in 1997 when it was sold to Scottish Telecom for £66 million - even though it operated at a loss. The brand eventually ended up at Vodafone, with its 15,000 remaining users told to move to more modern services in 2019.

After netting £30 million from the sale of Demon, Stanford bought a private plane and “one of the most lavish Rolls-Royces then available"

He told The Guardian in 2001: “I always wanted to be wealthy. Money doesn’t buy happiness but lack of it can lead to misery. Now I really enjoy my life, I do whatever I like and no-one tells me otherwise.”

With Redbus, Stanford invested in not just data centers, but also in land mine clearance, and 'light-bending windows.'

The venture was not wholly successful, with a “champagne-fueled romp” leading to him being banned from Claridge’s. He spent £1 million in a “badly managed” girl band called Girls@play, and tried to launch a streaming video service in the late 1990s.

Redbus Investments was launched with John Porter as its chairman, the grandson of Sir Jack Cohen, founder of Tesco, and son of the politician Dame Shirley Porter. That latter connection became problematic when Dame Shirley was disgraced in a 'homes for votes' scandal, where the government sold council homes to groups who were more likely to vote Conservative and moved homeless people out of regions with thin majorities.

The Dame was told by the House of Lords that she had to pay £40m for political corruption, but claimed she couldn't because she only had assets worth £300,000. However, in email correspondences to her son, it was revealed she was giving money to John and had millions of pounds. She was ultimately made to pay £12.3m, and soon after bought a house for £1.5m.

But the emails only came out because Stanford was secretly keeping a copy of all of John's emails, after the two fell out (Stanford always maintained an employee had set up the redirect).

Stanford had wanted to expand the colocation business, while Porter wanted to cut costs following the dot-com bust. Stanford sold his stake in 2003, after it fell from a £150m valuation to £3m; copying emails may have been an attempt to regain control. That month he was arrested and charged with conspiracy to blackmail and of intercepting communications under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000.

While maintaining his innocence, he was fined £20,000 and given a six-month suspended sentence.

Stanford is survived by his son and American-German science fiction writer partner Sylvia Spruck Wrigley.