Peter Jones (as seen on Dragons Den) attended Desborough School, Maidenhead and latterly The Windsor Boys' School where he studied A-Levels in Economics, Biology and Geography.
A keen tennis player as a teenager, he earned money by giving tennis lessons and set up his own tennis academy at the age of 16.
His second venture was a computer business where he manufactured PCs under his own brand and in his mid twenties opened a cocktail bar in Windsor based on the Tom Cruise film Cocktail on which he lost £200,000 after deciding to sell it. In his late twenties he lost his computer business due to customers failing to pay him. He was forced to give up his four-bedroom home in Bray, his BMW and Porsche cars and move back in with his parents.[3] He then joined Siemens Nixdorf, and became head of the PC Business in the UK the same year at only 28, the youngest ever head of a business unit.
After working for Siemens Nixdorf he worked in the telecommunications market for 12 months and made enough money to set-up his next venture Phones International Group in April 1998. He started humbly by sleeping on the office floor but business soon grew. The firm experienced explosive growth with revenue totalling £14 million by the end of the first year and £44 million by the end of the second. The company was one of the fastest growing businesses in Europe. Group turnover for 2005/2006 was in excess of £150 million. The group counts every leading brand in the wireless communications industry among its business partners, whether as a supplier, customer or collaborator.[citation needed]