Ian Johnson, Out Now
September 23, 2007
Ivan Massow is a true pink pound pioneer.
He was amongst the first in the UK market to recognise the strength and potential of the UK gay market, and made--and lost--a fortune in doing so.
Ivan also has the honour of establishing the most successful gay and lesbian community networking group, Jake TM, which has more than 30,000 members.
I was pleased to meet Ivan a few weeks ago and he impressed me in the short time I had to meet him. He was interviewing me for a forthcoming BBC feature story on homophobia and being gay in the UK workplace, which will screen in coming weeks on BBC 1 TV in the UK.
In the meantime, Ivan has a lot on his plate as a court battle against insurance giants Zurich is coming to a head for him.
Ivan Massow is working in Barcelona at present on his forthcoming autobiography. As well as a shared appreciation for the writings of George Orwell, he and I share a history of gay and lesbian marketing development, so I felt a lot of empathy for the experiences of being a gay marketing pioneer and entrepreneur he related to me when we met.
Today's UK Mail on Sunday newspaper has a feature article written by Ivan. As well as Gay Market News wanting to wish him a very happy and successful new decade (he just turned 40), we thought you may find it interesting reading this short extract of Ivan Massow's story, in his own words:
For all the immense sadness and disappointment, I feel free.
Failing is cathartic; it gives us a sense of perspective and reveals what is most important in life.
Also, I managed once before, while still in my early 20s, to build a business that at its height was valued at £22million, so who knows?
I'm only 40, and maybe one day I'll do it all again.
As Chris Evans said to me recently at a party thrown by George Michael – I'm name-dropping here, just to lighten the mood – 'Life is an act in two parts. It's whether you survive the interval.'
At 16, I left my Sussex comprehensive with one O-level – in metalwork – and began work as a lowly filing clerk in an insurance firm.
I had known I was gay for as long as I could remember, and came out not long afterwards.
My dyslexia made me a hopeless clerk, but I soon noticed the insurance salesmen were all using Dictaphones.
When I asked my boss if I could be a salesman, he agreed to give me a traineeship in the company's Bristol office.
It was there that I discovered the extent to which gay men were discriminated against by insurance companies.
At the height of the AIDS scare in the Eighties, companies either demanded huge premiums and compulsory HIV tests before giving homosexuals the life cover that was compulsory in those days for obtaining a mortgage, or else refused cover altogether.
Outraged that companies were able to get away with such blatant homophobia, I decided to use my insider knowledge of the industry to organise affordable insurance cover for gay men to remedy the injustice and make a difference.
Aged 21, I struck out on my own, establishing my first business in July 1990 from a squat in North London, and quickly building up thousands of gay clients.
To begin with, my only asset was a mobile phone the size of a brick.
But I knew that phone was the difference between success and failure. With it, I didn't need an office or a passable suit to do business.
Within months, my firm was making serious money. Credited with being the first to tap into, indeed create, the notion of the 'pink pound', I very quickly became richer than I'd ever thought possible.
At its height, my financial-services company employed 70 people with eight branches nationwide.
By the age of 22, I was driving a Ferrari and living in trendy Islington.
Five years later, I was running the tenth-largest independent financial services company in Britain.
By 30, I was chairman of the Institute of Contemporary Art.
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