Daniel Maurice Wagner

Daniel Maurice ("Dan") Wagner was born on 28 July 1963 in Edgware, Middlesex, England. He was educated briefly at Merchant Taylors' School, Northwood (from which he was expelled at 13) and University College School, London, before leaving formal education at 16. He began his career in sales — including a stint as a shop assistant for Julian Richer at Richer Sounds — then joined an advertising agency (WCRS) as an account executive, where he conceived the idea of building searchable databases of business information for marketing professionals.

In 1984, at age 20, he founded MAID (Market Analysis and Information Database), one of the world's first online information services, predating the commercial web. MAID achieved a large share of the online market-research market, listed on the London Stock Exchange in 1994 and on NASDAQ in 1995 (trading as Dialog), making Wagner one of the youngest CEOs of a public company. Its information-services division was sold to Thomson Corporation (now Thomson Reuters) for roughly $500 million around 2000. He was named Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year (1998) and a World Economic Forum "Global Leader of Tomorrow."

His subsequent ventures include Venda (founded ~1998–2001), an early SaaS/on-demand eCommerce platform built in part from the assets of the collapsed dotcom Boo.com and later acquired by NetSuite (2014); Attraqt, a search-and-merchandising SaaS business he co-founded and took public on London's AIM in 2014; and Powa Technologies (2007), a mobile-commerce and payments company that raised large sums but went into administration in February 2016 — a high-profile collapse that drew critical coverage from the BBC and Financial Times over claims made during his tenure.

Since 2016–2017 Wagner has been Founder, CEO and Chairman of Rezolve AI, which develops AI-powered commerce and customer-engagement technology. Rezolve became NASDAQ-listed (RZLV) via a reverse merger, and the company has reported rapid growth alongside partnerships with Microsoft and Google. Wagner invests in and backs Rezolve through his personal entity, DBLP Sea Cow Limited.

• Operates primarily as a founder-operator and principal/angel investor rather than running a conventional fund; his capital is chiefly deployed as a cornerstone investor into his own companies (via DBLP Sea Cow Limited).
• Sector conviction in eCommerce, mobile/omni-channel commerce, retail technology, SaaS, and AI-driven customer engagement — the through-line across MAID, Venda, Powa, Attraqt and Rezolve.
• Emphasizes timing over novelty: "Being right and being right at the right moment are different — markets reward the latter." Advises founders to solve operational friction rather than chase novelty, arguing "execution beats ideas."
• Stresses product-market fit before scaling, strategic partnerships with major platforms, and that credibility in enterprise sales is "built by execution, not promises."
• Believes enterprise/commerce AI requires purpose-built stacks for transactional accuracy rather than general-purpose consumer models.