Floyd Bradley, former UK managing director of Lotus Development UK and before that senior vice-president at Ashton Tate Corp, has left his job as general manager at European Software Publishing Ltd to run a group of start-up software companies. Bradley has teamed up with two private, sleeping partner investors to produce a six-figure sum which he has managed to spread across four companies. MI7 Ltd is a management information software firm dealing in executive information systems and data warehousing. Frontware Systems Ltd develops graphical user interface applications and SQL-based accounting systems, while OK Partners Ltd is a republisher of software, similar to European Software Publishing, which will distribute utilities aimed at big companies. F&T Solutions Ltd, meanwhile, is a consultancy also dealing in executive information systems for data access and reporting projects. Part of the group’s consultancy business will be coming from European Software, which Bradley said was more skilled in product sales than in services. In particular, F&T will be specialising in consulting using Forest & Trees, which European Software licensed from Portsmouth, New Hampshire-based Channel Computing Inc, a recent acquisition of Trinzic Corp. Bradley, who will need all the business he can get after spending a maximum of UKP250,000 on each firm, is keeping his old employer sweet with a no-staff-poaching policy. This should also benefit his equipty stake in European Software, which he is maintaining. Bradley also has minority stakes in three other businesses: SDL Ltd, a European firm dealing in software localisation, the Irvine, California-based Starbase Corp, which is developing an object-oriented application development environment, and City Systems Ltd, a bespoke database applications developer. Bradley, who describes himself as a workaholic, is burning the candle at both ends and in the middle by running all four firms simultaneously until he can find the right management to help out. He decided to start up four companies of his own because he didn’t want the fine-tuning problems normally associated with takeovers. Let’s hope that he can keep spinning plates until the firms begin to run themselves…