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PUTTING TOGETHER THE A-TEAM III — BRAM VAN DER KOLK

Dotcom recalls van der Kolk hanging around the start of the rally in Paris and passing him a business card, talking about software development and saying he was still studying. "One day when I'm done I would really like to work for you," he told Dotcom.

"So I took his card. He was based in Belgium and then after that Gumball was over, a year later, I was in Belgium and I remembered him and the card popped out and I gave him a call and we met in Belgium for a burger. I said, 'Well, when I have something coming up I will think of you.' The Megaupload idea came around, I didn't want to do it with Mathias first, because it was a really simple concept — anyone could develop a website like that. Someone who wasn't, in my opinion, at that time, very skilled. Someone like Bram could put that together. So I gave him that first project, that first opportunity, to do that."

THE GUMBALL CREATED footage which was highly valued in the online motoring message board community. Competing message boards traded clips of the rally, and other popular motoring footage. The files were large, particularly any recorded by Dotcom or those who travelled with him. He always sought out the best quality, most expensive equipment, which created huge files. Any video footage was difficult to transfer online — YouTube had yet to be created. It meant anyone wanting to share video would have to send it by email as attachments and sacrifice large amounts of bandwidth to do so. At the time, memory was money.

Dotcom, who always liked sharing his favourite car-racing clips, was irritated by the problem. The racing and rally files he wanted to share were defeated by technology.

The answer came in developing something which didn't exist. And when his love of car racing met his online, entrepreneurial streak it created a fortune.

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