London’s 101 Most Impressive & Successful Founders in the Video Space

Charles Black

Founder & CEO of Sen

Charles Black is an entrepreneur and the founder of Sen. It has been Charles’ dream since the age of 18 to build a space television network that films in space. Charles’s interest in space began as a child. In 1990 aged 18 Charles discovered his original instinct and vision to create a business that would be capable of existing and expanding forever in space and time, and that meant a business that gathered news and information about space, essentially filming the Universe for ever more. The vision for Sen had been born. With a belief that law would be a useful education for a life in business, Charles studied law at London University and graduated with a law degree in 1995. During his time at university the internet emerged in to the commercial world and Charles saw this as a means to start a business with just a computer and internet connection. He studied the internet and saw the potential for using it as a television medium and wrote a research paper entitled A Human Right to Broadcast ‘Television Speech’? This paper was published in 1996 by Tolley’s Communications Law. The paper argued that the internet meant anyone could technically broadcast by distributing video and therefore the law should be used to protect content rather than requiring a government license to broadcast. Charles’s vision of starting a space television channel using the Internet without the need for a government license was the motivation behind the paper. Charles’s interest in law continues and he is currently researching space law because of its relevance to the future regulation of space exploration. Having completed his legal training, qualifying as a barrister in 1997, Charles set up Space Internet Ltd. The original idea was to market businesses with videos on the internet which would provide the experience for making programmes about space. The business became focussed on web sites and web hosting as customers in the late 1990s were happy just to have a web site without the cost of video. Space Internet Ltd therefore developed in to a pure hosting company and re-branded as Nasstar. In 2004 Nasstar launched hosted desktop and hosted email services, becoming one of the pioneers of hosted desktop cloud computing. Nasstar was admitted to trading on the London Stock Exchange in 2005 under the symbol NASA. During his time as CEO of Nasstar Charles raised over £15m from investors, growing Nasstar both organically and through acquisitions. Nasstar plc now has a market cap of £30m and is a profitable and growing business. Charles stepped down as CEO in January 2014 to focus on developing his space business, Sen. Sen is Charles’s lifelong ambition has been to create a global space television network that promotes interest and education in space exploration, launching a network of video cameras into space and filming the Universe. In pursuit of his dream Charles is a committed Future Astronaut with Virgin Galactic and is doing a research degree in space law.

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About Sen: Streaming real-time videos from space for the benefit of humanity.

• Website
• Crunchbase
• Linkedin