FRED KARLSSON FONDLY remembers his first computer like another man might reminisce about his first teenage crush on a girl. It was a Spectre Video and he gazed at ' her' longingly for quite a while in a shop in his hometown of Nassjo in Sweden, wondering if she would ever be his.

He was 14 years old at the time and he and a childhood friend would visit the shop to look at this object of their adolescent dreams, to admire its compact form and even touch it appreciatively.

He decided to save up to buy it and his parents Anders and Karin generously agreed to give him half the money.

He doesn't recall now how much it cost but their 'first date', the day he went down to collect the computer and take it home, is still a very sweet moment in his memory bank.

It wasn't long before he and the pal had mastered it sufficiently to design a game which they sold to a computer game club for €80. 'It mightn't seem like a lot of money but to get paid for doing something that we loved was wonderful to us,' he said.

The level of financial reward may have increased considerably but Fred Karlsson, now 38, is still getting paid for doing something he loves.

He has recently been shortlisted as a finalist in the upcoming Ernest and Young Entrepreneur of the Year Competition for the hugely-successful online classified ads company DoneDeal.ie that he founded in Ireland five years ago with his Wexford wife Geraldine Cullen.

Geraldine is a daughter of Frances and Mary Cullen of Mulgannon, Wexford, who formerly owned the Honda garage in Carcur. She has a Computer Science degree from Waterford Institute of Technology.

Fred studied for a degree in Computer Science in Lund University and worked in IT for a time in Sweden before arriving in Ireland.

Reading their CV details, you realise that the pair come from very similar backgrounds - both grew up in towns about the same size; both had enterprising parents and both pursued computer careers.

'I came to Ireland in 1997. I wanted to work abroad. Dublin was the I.T. hub of Europe at the time. It was really easy to get a job,' Fred recalls.

He loved Ireland but three wet summers in succession depleted his serotonin levels and caused a dent in his naturally positive and smiling disposition. When a female work colleague on a match-making mission introduced him to Geraldine in early 1999, his weather-induced cloud of disenchantment was dispersed by a romantic bright spell. But that summer was atrociously dull and rainy and he told Geraldine ' this weather is killing me'. He thought he might frighten her off by asking her to return to Sweden with him so soon into their relationship, so they went to neutral Australia for a year, in search of glorious, happy sunshine and jobs in I.T.

They found both and spent nine months working in Sydney and three months travelling in Australia and Asia, before returning to Europe and the closer proximity of family and friends.

This time, they did go to Sweden and based themselves in Malmo where Geraldine who had been with Microsoft in Australia, began working with Qliktech while Fred who has done contract work for many of the top name computer companies, joined IBM.

' Life was very good. We were earning very good money', he says. But Fred Karlsson doesn't like to get too comfortable. He enjoys challenge and change and the pair moved again, this time back to Dublin.

But not before they tied the knot Swedishstyle six years ago in a castle ceremony attended by a contingent of family and friends who travelled from Wexford. The relaxed reception was held in a marquee beside the guesthouse run by Fred's parents.

A Swedish friend who is a professional belly-dancer entertained the guests with a fertility dance.

' It was a fantastic day. Swedish weddings are more laid back. Anything goes really,' says Geraldine, a former student of the Mercy primary school in John's Road and the Loreto secondary school.

Before leaving Sweden, they had great fun selling their furniture through a website called Blocket.se and on arrival in Dublin, they considered buying stuff the same way here but there was no website in existence.

It was the DoneDeal.ie eureka moment. With Geraldine working back in Microsoft and Fred in Gognotech, they set up their own website, cheekily putting some of their own and family and friends' belongings up for sale to get it started.

'We took photos of furniture in the house we were renting and put them up. If someone called, we said no, sorry that's been sold already. Luckily, new ads started coming in fairly quick,' he says

As Irish luck would have it, that summer of 2005 was tree-splittingly sunny but Fred and Geraldine were locked indoors like two pasty-faced computer nerds, perfecting the technology and user-friendliness of the site. They heard on the grapevine that there was a heat wave outside!

The weather differential between Sweden and Ireland is a continuing source of lighthearted dispute between the couple.

'He's always talking about how much better the weather is in Sweden but when we go there, it's usually the same as here. I think he wears rosy glasses', jokes Geraldine, defending Ireland's climatic reputation.

They moved lock, stock and computer-case to the sunny south east in September 2005 with Geraldine working a day job in the EPA and Fred in Wexford County Council while running the site at night and weekends.

'It was lovely to come back to Wexford. I hadn't lived here since I did my Leaving Cert', says Geraldine who has re-discovered her home town as an adult and businesswoman.

'We love it here. You get to a stage where you want a slower pace of life. There is a great entrepreneurial community in Wexford. Wexford County Enterprise Board and the Chamber of Commerce are doing great work,' she says.

Growing up in Wexford, she didn't realise the extent of the musical offerings here. ' There is so much going on from the opera and classical music events to choirs and musical societies.'

Fred doesn't sing. He tells you this as though his being forced to do so might lead to an immediate evacuation of all the small children and animals in his vocal range. Surely, it can't be that bad.

But he loves to appear on stage and he can thank Wexford's Oyster Lane Theatre Group for helping him to discover his inner thespian.

He has an individual dress style which is more casual than the traditional Irish businessman's uniform of suit and tie.

On the day we met, he was wearing a smart grey suit jacket with jeans but there was a surprise element when he removed it - the jacket lining was a patchwork of multi-coloured squares. Instead of a tie, he wears beads around his neck.

'Swedish men dress in a more casual style even in business situations. I suppose we are both quite informal, even in the office,' explains Geraldine.

He had no previous experience of acting when he appeared with Oyster Lane in two shows 'All for One' and 'Oliver'.

' They were kind enough to take me in. I think they were desperate to have guys. I had a great time,' says Fred who enjoys putting himself out of his comfort zone. He finds it stimulating. It was probably with the same instinct that he took the plunge and went full-time on DoneDeal in April 2007. He thought that if it didn't work out, they could always go back to Dublin. 'I can take risks but I'm a cautious person at heart so I do it in a planned, prepared way,' he confides.

Wexford County Enterprise Board gave them an employment grant of €7,000. The company took off like a runaway train. DoneDeal is now a big deal with 1.1 million new visits a month and over 40,000 new items advertised.

In April of this year alone, deals to an estimated value of €50 million were done through the website.

People use it to sell cars, horses, dogs, caravans, boats, machinery, household goods and every other imaginable item under the sun. Last week, a user in Limerick invited people to buy a ' hole in the ground' for €9.

The posting which included a photograph received 1,500 hits in the space of a few hours.

The staff at DoneDeal love when this happens and have occasionally posted their own spoof ads just for fun, including one for a second-hand Christmas tree with one previous owner, and an air guitar.

Fred's parents are delighted that their early half-share investment in that first computer, is paying off so spectacularly. Anders visits the site every morning and telephones regularly from Sweden with comments and advice. 'He knows more about what's on the site than I do', marvels the son.

The Cullen in-laws who include Geraldine's brother Sean, a garda and Brie, a nurse living in America, are also very proud of their achievements.

Far from hindering the new enterprise, the economic downturn has helped it to thrive. ' The recession has opened people's eyes to the value of second-hand stuff. Before the recession, Irish people didn't sell second hand furniture. Now they do,' says Fred.

A recent survey estimated that the average Irish person has €2,000 worth of unwanted clutter in their homes.

DoneDeal now employs six people based in offices in Wexford town where you are as likely to find a member of the team sitting on a gym ball as a chair. Anyone who gets a job in the company is given €50 and asked go out and buy a game for everyone in the office to play.

After dedicating four years of their lives to the company, to the exclusion of almost everything else, Fred and Geraldine set themselves a new target earlier this year.

'We want to make time for a personal life, to have evenings and weekends to ourselves, to meet friends,' said Fred. They took an extended holiday recently and drove through France up to Sweden.

When asked to describe the lifestyle in Sweden, as compared to Ireland, both of them use the words 'more organised'.

Being shortlisted in the Emerging Entrepreneur of the Year category in the Ernst and Young awards from which the winner will be announced in October, is a fantastic honour, according to Fred who spent a week in Shanghai where he attended the World Trade Expo, as part of the finalists' programme.

He hasn't given any thought to winning. 'Being nominated and getting to meet the other finalists like Ryland Collins, the creator of the Farmville game on Facebook, is a prize in itself.' FRED KARLSSON FONDLY remembers his first computer like another man might reminisce about his first teenage crush on a girl.

It was a Spectre Video and he gazed at ' her' longingly for quite a while in a shop in his hometown of Nassjo in Sweden, wondering if she would ever be his.

He was 14 years old at the time and he and a childhood friend would visit the shop to look at this object of their adolescent dreams, to admire its compact form and even touch it appreciatively.

He decided to save up to buy it and his parents Anders and Karin generously agreed to give him half the money.

He doesn't recall now how much it cost but their 'first date', the day he went down to collect the computer and take it home, is still a very sweet moment in his memory bank.

It wasn't long before he and the pal had mastered it sufficiently to design a game which they sold to a computer game club for €80. 'It mightn't seem like a lot of money but to get paid for doing something that we loved was wonderful to us,' he said.

The level of financial reward may have increased considerably but Fred Karlsson, now 38, is still getting paid for doing something he loves.

He has recently been shortlisted as a finalist in the upcoming Ernest and Young Entrepreneur of the Year Competition for the hugely-successful online classified ads company DoneDeal.ie that he founded in Ireland five years ago with his Wexford wife Geraldine Cullen.

Geraldine is a daughter of Frances and Mary Cullen of Mulgannon, Wexford, who formerly owned the Honda garage in Carcur. She has a Computer Science degree from Waterford Institute of Technology.

Fred studied for a degree in Computer Science in Lund University and worked in IT for a time in Sweden before arriving in Ireland.

Reading their CV details, you realise that the pair come from very similar backgrounds - both grew up in towns about the same size; both had enterprising parents and both pursued computer careers.

'I came to Ireland in 1997. I wanted to work abroad. Dublin was the I.T. hub of Europe at the time. It was really easy to get a job,' Fred recalls.

He loved Ireland but three wet summers in succession depleted his serotonin levels and caused a dent in his naturally positive and smiling disposition. When a female work colleague on a match-making mission introduced him to Geraldine in early 1999, his weather-induced cloud of disenchantment was dispersed by a romantic bright spell. But that summer was atrociously dull and rainy and he told Geraldine ' this weather is killing me'. He thought he might frighten her off by asking her to return to Sweden with him so soon into their relationship, so they went to neutral Australia for a year, in search of glorious, happy sunshine and jobs in I.T.

They found both and spent nine months working in Sydney and three months travelling in Australia and Asia, before returning to Europe and the closer proximity of family and friends.

This time, they did go to Sweden and based themselves in Malmo where Geraldine who had been with Microsoft in Australia, began working with Qliktech while Fred who has done contract work for many of the top name computer companies, joined IBM.

' Life was very good. We were earning very good money', he says. But Fred Karlsson doesn't like to get too comfortable. He enjoys challenge and change and the pair moved again, this time back to Dublin.

But not before they tied the knot Swedishstyle six years ago in a castle ceremony attended by a contingent of family and friends who travelled from Wexford. The relaxed reception was held in a marquee beside the guesthouse run by Fred's parents.

A Swedish friend who is a professional belly-dancer entertained the guests with a fertility dance.

' It was a fantastic day. Swedish weddings are more laid back. Anything goes really,' says Geraldine, a former student of the Mercy primary school in John's Road and the Loreto secondary school.

Before leaving Sweden, they had great fun selling their furniture through a website called Blocket.se and on arrival in Dublin, they considered buying stuff the same way here but there was no website in existence.

It was the DoneDeal.ie eureka moment. With Geraldine working back in Microsoft and Fred in Gognotech, they set up their own website, cheekily putting some of their own and family and friends' belongings up for sale to get it started.

'We took photos of furniture in the house we were renting and put them up. If someone called, we said no, sorry that's been sold already. Luckily, new ads started coming in fairly quick,' he says

As Irish luck would have it, that summer of 2005 was tree-splittingly sunny but Fred and Geraldine were locked indoors like two pasty-faced computer nerds, perfecting the technology and user-friendliness of the site. They heard on the grapevine that there was a heat wave outside!

The weather differential between Sweden and Ireland is a continuing source of lighthearted dispute between the couple.

'He's always talking about how much better the weather is in Sweden but when we go there, it's usually the same as here. I think he wears rosy glasses', jokes Geraldine, defending Ireland's climatic reputation.

They moved lock, stock and computer-case to the sunny south east in September 2005 with Geraldine working a day job in the EPA and Fred in Wexford County Council while running the site at night and weekends.

'It was lovely to come back to Wexford. I hadn't lived here since I did my Leaving Cert', says Geraldine who has re-discovered her home town as an adult and businesswoman.

'We love it here. You get to a stage where you want a slower pace of life. There is a great entrepreneurial community in Wexford. Wexford County Enterprise Board and the Chamber of Commerce are doing great work,' she says.

Growing up in Wexford, she didn't realise the extent of the musical offerings here. ' There is so much going on from the opera and classical music events to choirs and musical societies.'

Fred doesn't sing. He tells you this as though his being forced to do so might lead to an immediate evacuation of all the small children and animals in his vocal range. Surely, it can't be that bad.

But he loves to appear on stage and he can thank Wexford's Oyster Lane Theatre Group for helping him to discover his inner thespian.

He has an individual dress style which is more casual than the traditional Irish businessman's uniform of suit and tie.

On the day we met, he was wearing a smart grey suit jacket with jeans but there was a surprise element when he removed it - the jacket lining was a patchwork of multi-coloured squares. Instead of a tie, he wears beads around his neck.

'Swedish men dress in a more casual style even in business situations. I suppose we are both quite informal, even in the office,' explains Geraldine.

He had no previous experience of acting when he appeared with Oyster Lane in two shows 'All for One' and 'Oliver'.

' They were kind enough to take me in. I think they were desperate to have guys. I had a great time,' says Fred who enjoys putting himself out of his comfort zone. He finds it stimulating. It was probably with the same instinct that he took the plunge and went full-time on DoneDeal in April 2007. He thought that if it didn't work out, they could always go back to Dublin. 'I can take risks but I'm a cautious person at heart so I do it in a planned, prepared way,' he confides.

Wexford County Enterprise Board gave them an employment grant of €7,000. The company took off like a runaway train. DoneDeal is now a big deal with 1.1 million new visits a month and over 40,000 new items advertised.

In April of this year alone, deals to an estimated value of €50 million were done through the website.

People use it to sell cars, horses, dogs, caravans, boats, machinery, household goods and every other imaginable item under the sun. Last week, a user in Limerick invited people to buy a ' hole in the ground' for €9.

The posting which included a photograph received 1,500 hits in the space of a few hours.

The staff at DoneDeal love when this happens and have occasionally posted their own spoof ads just for fun, including one for a second-hand Christmas tree with one previous owner, and an air guitar.

Fred's parents are delighted that their early half-share investment in that first computer, is paying off so spectacularly. Anders visits the site every morning and telephones regularly from Sweden with comments and advice. 'He knows more about what's on the site than I do', marvels the son.

The Cullen in-laws who include Geraldine's brother Sean, a garda and Brie, a nurse living in America, are also very proud of their achievements.

Far from hindering the new enterprise, the economic downturn has helped it to thrive. ' The recession has opened people's eyes to the value of second-hand stuff. Before the recession, Irish people didn't sell second hand furniture. Now they do,' says Fred.

A recent survey estimated that the average Irish person has €2,000 worth of unwanted clutter in their homes.

DoneDeal now employs six people based in offices in Wexford town where you are as likely to find a member of the team sitting on a gym ball as a chair. Anyone who gets a job in the company is given €50 and asked go out and buy a game for everyone in the office to play.

After dedicating four years of their lives to the company, to the exclusion of almost everything else, Fred and Geraldine set themselves a new target earlier this year.

'We want to make time for a personal life, to have evenings and weekends to ourselves, to meet friends,' said Fred. They took an extended holiday recently and drove through France up to Sweden.

When asked to describe the lifestyle in Sweden, as compared to Ireland, both of them use the words 'more organised'.

Being shortlisted in the Emerging Entrepreneur of the Year category in the Ernst and Young awards from which the winner will be announced in October, is a fantastic honour, according to Fred who spent a week in Shanghai where he attended the World Trade Expo, as part of the finalists' programme.

He hasn't given any thought to winning. 'Being nominated and getting to meet the other finalists like Ryland Collins, the creator of the Farmville game on Facebook, is a prize in itself.'