Anthony Karibian
Anthony Karibian

When Anthony Karibian launched an online office supplies company in the late 1990s, the internet itself still felt experimental. Businesses were only beginning to understand how digital commerce might change the way they operated, and many entrepreneurs were rushing to participate in what appeared to be an entirely new economy.

Karibian had joined a young internet strategy consultancy shortly after business school, becoming one of its earliest employees at the outset of the dot-com boom. Working remotely long before it became common, he advised large companies on internet strategy while watching new businesses emerge almost daily.

At roughly the same time, his brother had begun discussing the possibility of building an online office supplies company in the United Kingdom. After researching the market, the opportunity appeared significant enough that Karibian took a leave of absence and co-founded Euroffice.

The company attracted experienced industry leadership, including the co-founder of Staples joining its board, and became one of the early businesses attempting to move office procurement online.

For Karibian, Euroffice became the first of several businesses aimed at a similar problem. Small companies often lacked access to the same tools, services, and opportunities available to larger organisations, and closing that gap would become a recurring focus throughout his career.

In 2003, while helping run Euroffice, Karibian received a sales call from a small telecommunications provider. At the time, Ofcom's deregulation efforts were beginning to reshape Britain's telecom market. For decades, BT had dominated business telephone services, and many small businesses had few alternatives.

After speaking with business owners, Karibian and his co-founder recognised a substantial opportunity, finding that many small companies were dissatisfied with their existing providers but had few meaningful alternatives.

The result was XLN Telecom.

Starting as a telecommunications reseller, the company focused exclusively on small businesses. Within five years, XLN had grown to approximately 130,000 customers and £60 million in annual revenue. At one point, only BT served more small business telecom customers in the United Kingdom.

The experience gave Karibian a front-row seat to the evolution of the communications industry. As operations became increasingly automated and digital technologies matured, he began to believe another major transition was approaching. Traditional landlines would eventually disappear.

After exiting XLN following its sale to private equity investor ECI, Karibian initially established bOnline as a website platform for small businesses. The original plan involved combining websites with other digital services. The launch of VoIP services in 2016 ultimately pushed the company toward cloud communications.

For Karibian, the challenge was not simply replacing traditional phone systems, but creating a VoIP product that small businesses could adopt without the technical expertise that many existing solutions demanded. Small businesses, he believed, needed technology designed specifically for their circumstances.

The approach gradually gained traction. Today, bOnline serves more than 40,000 customers and focuses exclusively on sole traders, micro businesses, and smaller companies transitioning away from traditional telephone systems.

That emphasis on smaller businesses has remained consistent throughout Karibian's career. From online office supplies and business telecom services to cloud communications, he has repeatedly built companies aimed at giving smaller firms access to tools and capabilities that were often designed for much larger organisations.

That focus may prove particularly relevant as the United Kingdom prepares to retire its legacy telephone network. Many small businesses still rely on traditional landlines, and Karibian has argued that awareness of the 2027 switch-off remains low among smaller firms, with some owners delaying the move to digital services.

'We are trying to change this perception of VoIP being complicated by offering a product that was created from day one with a focus on the needs of the small business owner,' he says.

The result is a company that increasingly resembles a software business more than a traditional telecommunications provider, with investments in automation, self-service tools, analytics, and cloud-based features that allow customers to manage communications without technical expertise.

For Karibian, the evolution from Euroffice to XLN and then to bOnline does not represent three unrelated businesses. Instead, it involves three different moments in Britain's digital economy, each centred on helping small businesses access technologies that had previously been difficult, expensive, or unavailable.

Today it continues with AI, as bOnline evolves into a company bringing powerful AI tools and automation to small businesses that even bigger businesses still lack.

As Britain's communications industry enters another period of transition, Karibian again finds himself working at the intersection of technological change and the needs of small businesses, a position that has defined much of his career across three decades of the country's digital economy.