“It’s all very easy to fall in love with the idea of being an entrepreneur,” he cautions. “What’s most important is doing. Talking and conferences make up a maximum of 5% of doing business,” he adds.

Lund often works to the popular Web 2.0 business model – the simple logic is that providing value services on the web for free, or cheaply, attracts page views, and page views or “eye balls” bring serious advertising cash.

Zecco is based on this principle. Launched in September 2006, the free trading platform has grown at breakneck speed, attracting over 80,000 clients in its first 12 months. But, as critics point out, its long-term success is far from certain. “If cheap was all that mattered, Schwab should have killed Merrill years ago,” says Neil Kjeldsen of Techcrunch. “When it comes to money, relationships seem to matter.”

It’s true that some Zecco users have complained of a cumbersome layout and intrusive adverts. Critics also point out that Bank of America and Wells Fargo have since introduced their own commission-free trading programmes. However, both require minimum account values of €16,600, while Zecco requires only €1,660 to get started. The company is bringing the barriers to entry down for occasional and amateur investors. Kjeldsen himself admits that established brokers are “moving into advisory services, managed accounts, proprietary mutual funds, and banking/lending, because they know they can’t depend on trading commissions as a revenue stream forever”. These firms already make more money from mutual fund and cash balances than they do from trading, so Zecco may not dent the fortunes of its big rivals, but it should win over a sizeable – and loyal – fan base.

Zecco makes its money from interest on client accounts and lending fees, with the company also clawing back some cash by charging a small fee to users who make more than 10 trades a month.

Another Lund company supported by advertising is Orolix, the Brazilian free internet service provider (ISP) and the country’s fastest growing online company. It is a typical Lund venture, distinguished by the absence of a multimillion-dollar marketing budget, relying instead on word of mouth.

Bullguard, too, doesn’t command column inches in the UK, but it regularly tops customer reviews, ahead of rivals like Norton, McAfee and F-Secure, and is a best seller on Amazon. A similar example is Jeff Chen’s Chinese web browser Maxthon – the far east’s answer to Mozilla Firefox – which has claimed 100 million downloads so far. Maxthon makes most of its money from search-related ads.

HelloGroup designed Nyhedsavisen’s original website, avisen.dk, with an emphasis on blogging and reader comments, insisting that “citizens take control”. The fact that Lund has joined forces with Morten Wagner of Freeway – the owner of hugely popular social networking sites arto.dk and dating.dk – hints that the online edition may receive further attention as a source of advertising revenue. The pair are rumoured to have picked up their 51% stake for just one krone.

This battle requires deep pockets, even by their standards, so they’ll have to turn things around quickly. However, Lund has stretched himself to the limit before: “A week before Skype was sold, I was out of money,” he admits. “I had over-invested. But even now I’m very heavily geared. I do it out of passion, addiction. I don’t care about my own money, I just care about my companies.” Lund, an ex-paper boy himself, prefers to use a bicycle for day-to-day travel and still doesn’t have a car of his own.