{"id":491,"date":"2007-08-31T08:18:45","date_gmt":"2007-08-31T07:18:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/startups.co.uk\/?p=491"},"modified":"2021-05-18T10:24:07","modified_gmt":"2021-05-18T09:24:07","slug":"38-friends-abroad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/startups.co.uk\/startups-100\/2008\/38-friends-abroad\/","title":{"rendered":"38. Friends Abroad"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Founder:&nbsp;<\/strong>Simon Murdoch<br><strong>Website:<\/strong> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.friendsabroad.com\">www.friendsabroad.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Simon is no stranger to web success. He set up online shop Bookpages.co.uk in 1996 which he sold to Amazon. He later went on to head up the UK branch of the ecommerce giant, so it comes as no surprise that he counts Jeff Bezos, Amazon&rsquo;s founder, as his entrepreneurial hero.<\/p>\n<p>Friends Abroad, while still an online venture, takes a step away from bookselling. The site is a social network for developing language skills by communicating with people around the world. Murdoch has also recently launched DoYouSpeak.com, an online classroom for those wishing to learn English.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Founder:&nbsp;Simon MurdochWebsite: www.friendsabroad.com Simon is no stranger to web success. He set up online shop Bookpages.co.uk in 1996 which he sold to Amazon. He later went on to head up the UK branch of the ecommerce giant, so it comes as no surprise that he counts Jeff Bezos, Amazon&rsquo;s founder, as his entrepreneurial hero. Friends [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":91469,"featured_media":493,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[154],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-154"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n<title>38. Friends Abroad - Startups.co.uk<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/startups.co.uk\/startups-100\/2008\/38-friends-abroad\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"38. 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