A former Saltus Grammar School pupil, who developed a video sharing website from his bedroom, has sold his business to an American media company for $1.25 million.

Bermudian Kieran O'Neill, 20, created video streaming web site HolyLemon.com in 2003, two years before the launch of YouTube, which has now become the world's home for online video sharing.

Mr. O'Neill currently resides in Winchester, UK and attends Bath University where he's studying business administration.

He sold his business in April of this year to Handheld Entertainment, a NASDAQ listed company.

And amazingly, he built the website while taking his GCSEs.

At 19 years old, Kieran was the sole owner of the company and impressively handled both the negotiation and auction process between a number of different parties while undertaking his studies.

HolyLemon.com started out as a medium to showcase flash animations for Mr. O'Neill's friends. As the site became increasingly popular by word-of-mouth, he began to host video clips submitted by users.

He is quoted by the BBC news as saying: "With exams, I haven't really had time to celebrate yet. The website started off as a way of showing flash animations I made for my friends and it just grew from there.

"I designed the early sites in my bedroom at home and the trick was learning how to effectively stream user-generated video clips through the browser.

"It is what you see everywhere now, but then it was a really novel idea — particularly for humorous websites."

The website went on to attract 50,000 users per day, becoming Google's highest-ranked web site for the search term "funny videos".

Over the last year, Mr. O'Neill has reportedly refused several offers for his business, with Brad Greenspan, an early investor in MySpace, believed to be among them.

Mr. O'Neill now holds shares in the parent company and can now invest in two new ventures he is currently working on.