Rod Cambridge was going on holiday to New York. Being tech-savvy, he searched the internet for information on the best places to go and best things to do.

He dutifully downloaded the relevant pages and printed them out. But in his hurry to get to the airport, Mr Cambridge managed to leave them on the kitchen table.

One trans-Atlantic flight later, a business idea was born.

The London-based father of four realised that for many people iPods had become an essential travel accessory.

"I was listening to my iPod and remembered it has a feature that allows you to upload notes. So why not load the travel data onto it?"

This was three years ago. Now, 50 million iPods have been sold around the world, and Mr Cambridge has launched his web-based business, Expodition.

He had been tinkering with the idea since the trip and last year read about The Sunday Times One Minute Pitch business start-up competition.

"I thought, I’m going to be 40 soon so I may as well give it a go," he said. He entered the £100,000 contest. But it was won by a PhD student who had invented a water pump for farmers in developing countries.

Launched

Undeterred, indeed spurred on by the competition, Mr Cambridge worked through late nights and weekends, around his day job in IT security and around ferrying his children to gymnastics, drama classes and university.

"I’m a one-man band. I had to do all the web development myself, all the graphics.

"For the last six months or so there's been lots of late nights developing the code that powers the web site. It’s been a bit of a drain."

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