POLLY GOWERS jokes that she is “unemployable”. In one way or another, the internet entrepreneur has always been her own boss, she says.

From the moment she was first put on a horse, aged 3, her sole preoccupation was riding. “I used to come home from school and ride in the dark. I would beg my mother to leave the car headlights on so that I could still see the field.”

As a teenager she was short-listed for a national young rider team. She began competing professionally and at 18 turned down a place to study medicine to concentrate on professional events riding. At her peak she was competing three times a week, often riding ten horses a day.

This made finding a traditional job difficult. To pay the bills she rented stables and trained young horses to competition standard, giving lessons to their owners. She didn’t realise at the time that it would later prove valuable business experience. “I was completely obsessed with winning. It was all I thought about.”

When she turned 30, the dangers in her profession started to gnaw. “Two very good friends died competing. It makes your mortality feel real. I didn’t want to have to go fast for a living.” Selling horses she loved had also taken some of the magic out of it. “I thought if I was going to have a career change then that was the time to do it.”

She applied for a job with a web agency and kept riding before leaving both to start a search marketing business. Then came a better idea. “I jokingly said to my business partner, ‘Why can’t we use search to raise money for charities?’ ” The idea became Everyclick, a search engine that makes money from sponsored advertising. Getting the idea off the ground revealed the grit in the entrepreneur’s smile. “It’s not easy standing up in front of bank managers saying: “I want to start a business that gives half its revenue to charity.” She kept banging on doors, refusing to take no for an answer. When she had raised half the money, she took out a mortgage to fund the rest.

Learning the charity sector took time, she says. “I naively thought we’d launch and the world would say ‘what a fantastic idea’. But the business of giving is quite complicated.”

Although she occasionally hankers after the outdoor life, she doesn’t miss riding. “I have a new battle and that is competing against Google.”

The search engine is not yet in profit but has raised £400,000 for charity since its launch in 2005. Gowers has grand ambitions for her social enterprise. “[In ten years’ time] I want to see Everyclick on every piece of corporate correspondence.” Everyclick is now the UK’s eighth largest search engine and interest is growing.

“I knew it was going to work. Why wouldn’t it?” she says. Yet beneath the bravado, no conviction is completely ironclad. “I’ve been utterly terrified on a number of occasions,” she says. “It’s a bit like riding in the dark.” everyclick.com

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