The Observer Magazine – The Young Rich

The entrepreneurs

Jason Drummond is richer than all of the Spice Girls put together and virtually unknown. At 30 he is a relative old- timer – the youngest on this list is just 21. Many have set up companies in the past 12 months and are now millionaires. Welcome to a new generation of Young Rich entrepreneurs.

01 JASON DRUMMOND, 30
Founder, Virtual Internet £123 million (£24m)

Jason Drummond gives the impression of being in a hurry. When he listens his foot taps impatiently, and he constantly fiddles with his keys or a couple of pens on his desk in his cramped and featureless office in a large Georgian building in Fulham – around the corner from where he grew up. His eyes are cobalt blue, and he carries a little too much weight for his 5ft 8in frame. Although he doesn’t play any sport, he looks like a rugby player in need of a few weeks’ pre-season training. But aged 30 he is worth more than the Spice Girls put together and is about to get a whole lot richer when his Virtual Internet company floats on the full Stock Market later this month. He claims that when he was a child he told his mother that he wanted to be a shopkeeper. Indeed his mum, who was divorced from his father when Drummond was just four, crops up regularly in his conversation. His mother, he says, is where he gets his drive. She didn’t remarry, and struggled to bring up Drummond and his brothers : Justin, who was then 12 months, and six-year-old Nigel. ‘It was a middle-class upbringing without the money,’ remembers Drummond. ‘My mother gave us our values. Not to be too English, not to accept that there were any positions that we couldn’t achieve or aspire to. She gave us the confidence that with hard work anything is possible.’ Drummond’s father remains estranged from the family. While still at his Fulham comprehensive, Drummond began selling mail-order computers. He left school after his A-levels and worked as a salesman for Reed Business Publishing where he first saw a fax machine – it didn’t exactly change his life but it did make an immediate impact. ‘It took me five minutes to decide to leave the company and set up my own fax business.’ He went on to set up and sell a number of computer and technology firms before founding Virtual Internet in 1996. It has carved a lucrative business out of registering domain names for companies on the internet to protect their copyright and brand names. In essence it provides security to any business operating on the internet. The company, which for the moment is floated on the Alternative Investment Market, has a market capitalisation of £179m. It is more highly valued by the City than household retail names like House of Fraser, Storehouse, French Connection and Harvey Nichols. Drummond owns 69 per cent. ‘It’s not about the cash, otherwise I would have retired,’ Drummond says, as he drops the pen he has been fiddling with. ‘It’s about making this company a dominant force in Europe, and being big enough to challenge the largest American companies.’ He says he wants to be a ‘leader’ in the new business order but gives little clue as to where that ambition comes from. These are grand plans from a company which only turned in profits of £2.1m last year, even if this is £2.1m more than most internet companies make. At home, Drummond is determined to be the father he never had. He met his wife Jackie, who was then an airline stewardess, when he was 20. They have been married for eight years, and have two children : three-year-old Mathew and Phoebe, who is 15 months. There is nothing on his messy desk to remind him of his family. But uniquely among these entrepreneurs, he never works at weekends. They are reserved for his family. ‘Jackie stopped working a couple of years ago, and she’s in charge of what we do at home. I’m happy to go along with that.’ Ironically it is the family which is now forcing its way w into Drummond’s business activities. Last November Drummond quietly set up a new ‘family’ business-a web TV venture called onthebox.com. He is the sole director and his wife is company secretary. Its purpose is unclear but if it is as successful as his day job the family will never have to worry about a pension. It may even stop Drummond being in such a hurry.