According to a survey carried out last year by Beyond Bricks, the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) -backed portal for internet entrepreneurs, four of the six best cities for starting up internet businesses are Manchester, Newcastle, Liverpool and Leeds.

What's more, the dotcom fallout doesn't seem to have discouraged entrepreneurs away from new media, as the survey also shows that 30 per cent of all start-ups are internet-based.

Even more encouraging is the news that 32 per cent of the 4,000 Beyond Bricks members surveyed have worked on other start-ups, with 2 per cent having been involved in four others.

Manchester and its surrounding area are home to a number of thriving digital companies. Confidence in the region's potential and the ability of digital companies to be located anywhere mean that such companies do not feel the need to move to London.

The fact that Manchester, with the highest number of internet entrepreneurs outside London, has a digital pedigree is not news to Nick Jaspan, one of the region's top entrepreneurs. He has been responsible for the setting up and development of two business information services, zephus.com and j4b.

He also co-founded Newsco Publications, a publisher of regional business magazines and directories, backed by 3i. Newsco now publishes Northwest Business Insider, Yorkshire Business Insider, Finance Business Insider, the Englandplc series, and a series of corporate finance directories and databases.

Jaspan was responsible for setting up and developing an electronic database and search facility for Newsco that gradually developed into zephus.com, a database covering corporate finance activity throughout Europe.

Initially, zephus.com was a largely free service that generated revenues from advertising, sponsorship, newsletters, events and customised research.

It quickly established itself as an authoritative source for mergers and acquisitions, private equity and IPO data, competing with similar products published by giants such as Thomson.

As it was enhanced, zephus.com became a subscription-based service and last year it was acquired by Bureau van Dijk, which changed the product's name to Zephyr. The zephus.com staff, including its team of researchers and managers, have become part of Bureau van Dijk and continue to be located in Manchester.

Newsco was bought by Regional Independent Media in December 1999, which enabled Nick Jaspan to pursue his j4b (Just For Business) idea.

j4b is an information publishing, technology and business services company based in Wilmslow, Cheshire. The company was formed in 2000 and, through the merger of j4b plc and the privately owned Zemeta, it now has a turnover of £4m and 42 full-time staff.

The merger with Zemeta brought a strong focus on technology development and specialist research to complement j4b's skills in information gathering & publishing.

j4b's technology team is responsible for the design and creation of a number of websites, including j4b.co.uk, the grants and funding web service, which was launched in January 2001.

With j4b Jaspan applied the same business model he had used before, offering a mix of free data alongside subscription-based services such as email alerts.

Since its launch, the site has attracted 265,000 visits and has 54,000 registered users. It is also part of the DTI eCommerce enterprise portal, Beyond Bricks and, in November 2001, it won the Big Chip Best B2B Website award, followed by the Daily Telegraph/Sage Best Business Website Award in 2002.

j4b is a core member of a consortium that has been formed to develop a trans-European grants and inward investment funding database and website, with funding from the EU.

In addition, the company is currently developing the Access to Finance e-Portal for one of England's Regional Development Agencies, with a number of similar projects in the pipeline.

Other websites that have been managed by the technology division include wired-gov.net, a personalised email alert service, which delivers relevant press releases from government departments and agencies.

After the dotcom bubble burst, internet success stories are rare, but Nick Jaspan's two companies have continued to prosper. If the slump taught us anything it's that merely having an internet-based business isn't enough.

The survivors are those companies that have strong management, relevant and reliable products, a clear understanding of the market and their customers and, according to Jaspan, a lot of luck.

Reflecting on why his businesses have been so successful, he says: "A combination of luck, a willingness to adapt, to reinvent ourselves and developing good relationships with potential partners.

"Also, by choosing a sound founding co-partner, we were able to draw upon existing real business, as opposed to the wonders of dotcommery and windmills in the sky."

Pam Foster is an information industry journalist and editor