Multimap founder Sean Phelan on the route to success

Sean Phelan has been listening closely to the words of his friends and advisors after selling his mapping website Multimap, which he started in 1995, to Microsoft in December 2007. Their advice to the exiting entrepreneur has been: do not start another business within the first year, do not buy another business in the first year, and just because you've been successful once, don't think you've got an ordained ability to succeed. "You've got to retain some humility. I propose to stick to all three of those key rules," says Phelan.

He can't disclose what Microsoft paid for his business—which attracts more than 10 million users per quarter—saying: "I've read £50m and I've read $50m. I can confirm it's somewhere between the two." What he does know is this: "The world is moving from maps on paper to maps on screen. In around 20 years, our children will never know what it's like to be lost. Map-reading will become one of those traditional skills, like using a sextant."

Phelan admits he's survived some turbulent times: "We tightened our belts and put a freeze on recruiting during the dotcom bust. We pretty much sold our way through, because the internet bubble was a bubble in valuation, it wasn't a bubble in terms of use of the internet. More and more people were using sites, and B2B traffic continued to grow steadily all through that time."

He hopes to use his own ability to "wander around enthusing people and laying out a vision" to encourage young entrepreneurs. He'll also do some angel investing: "It's likely to be around clean-tech. I'm already an angel investor in a carbon offsetting company. This green power, clean power thing is a fascinating thing to do."