During the dot-com boom, Schmitt founded PeopleSound, the first platform for digital music streaming, which was backed pre-IPO by Bernard Arnault.

[2] After attending high school in Brussels, Schmitt was educated at the University of Cambridge, studying engineering, where he graduated top of class.

At peak, it was amongst the top ten most visited entertainment websites in Europe, with millions of registered users, and one of the highest profile new-age internet startups.

Schmitt experienced significant media coverage at the time as an key example of the dot-com boom, including in the BBC documentary "Inside Dot Com".

[9] Starting from an initial six stores in 2003, Silverscreen was the United Kingdom's first specialist DVD high street retailer offering an extensive selection of chart and non-chart products.

The chain was credited with pioneering the implementation of editorial-led catalogue recommendation in mainstream retail, bringing alive deep archive titles in entertaining hotspots such as "before they were famous", "so bad, they're good", or "the greatest car chases on film".

Apax backed the original launch of Silverscreen in 2003 with £3.5m of funding and followed it up with a secondary fundraising of £20m in 2004 to help finance the company's ambitious plans to open 160 stores.

The platform allowed users to follow and interact with their favourite TV shows, as well as play games and take part in polls.

[18] DriveTribe is an automotive online community platform founded by Schmitt, alongside The Grand Tour presenters Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond.