First job I had (1995) was "Classified Ads on the Internet" - back then it was expensive to host a website and hugely expensive to add CGI (I think Demon wanted maybe £300 a month for that?) and the money ran out after a year. If they'd been able to keep it funded for, say, another 2-3 years, until home internet was more accessible, I think they'd have been in a pretty good position to own UK classifieds on the web (at least for a while.)