Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales on internet firms' tax affairs and his virtual mobile phone company with a social dimension

It’s lunchtime at one of the City of London’s biggest conference centres and the suit and stiletto brigade are making a bee-line for the canapés and cheap Prosecco.

Dozens of corporate types file past us, deep in conversation and oblivious to who is in their midst.

Dapper in a navy blue suit, open-necked shirt and a rather smart and colourful pair of brogues, Jimmy Wales looks otherwise unremarkable.

He might even be mistaken for one of the forty and fifty-something ‘suits’ that fill the atrium below if this was dress down day.

New project: Jimmy Wales' latest project is a virtual mobile phone company called The People’s Operator

New project: Jimmy Wales' latest project is a virtual mobile phone company called The People’s Operator

Yet Wales is anything but an anonymous corporate clone. He’s an internet pioneer whose efforts pre-date those of Google, Facebook and YouTube. He is, of course, the founder of Wikipedia.

The online encyclopaedia ranks as the fifth most popular website in the world receiving 15billion page views per month. It recently celebrated its 15th birthday, which in internet years (like dog years) makes it very old.

It means an entire generation has now missed out on the delights of the library and carrying out basic, book-based research.

In the Lyall household my two teens, when challenged to find out something new, will tell me: ‘Don’t worry dad, we’ll Wiki it.’

Not that I hanker for the old days. I regularly draw from the 38m-page archive generated by an 80,000-strong army of volunteer contributors and editors who maintain and update the pages of Wikipedia.

Jimmy Wales 

Born: August 7, 1966, Huntsville Alabama

Education: Auburn University, University of Alabama

Family: Married to Kate Garvey, former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s diary secretary. Three daughters.

Net worth: Estimate at US$1mln.

Home: Notting Hill, west London. “I love London, I think it is a fantastic city to do business in. It is a great place to live. It’s a cliché, but time-zone wise it is right in the middle of the world. That’s good for my work, which is global.”

Reading: The Story of the Negro: The Rise of the Race from Slavery, by Booker T Washington

Watching: BBC’s adaptation of War & Peace

Gadget: Smartphone, “but I really have to learn to charge it in a room other than the bedroom at night otherwise I’m up reading email”.

Day in the life: 'There is probably not an average day for me,' Wales says. 'I still travel for meetings and give speeches. When I am in London I have some days when I come in and work with the development team at The People’s Operator, other days I work in my personal office. And then there are days when I’m attending tech events and meeting investors. So no one day is the same.'

Downtime: 'Outside of work I lead a pretty normal life. I spend a lot less time in the US than I did now that my four-year-old has started school. I’m now on the school holiday schedule.'

Geek rating: 10 out of 10. Wales’s Wiki entry describes him as having been addicted to the internet from an “early stage and he wrote computer code during his leisure time”. 

In fact, Wales’s Wiki profile, which tells me he is also known as ‘Jimbo’, was part of my background reading for our interview. Naturally, I ask: is your Wiki entry correct?

He chuckles, though there was a years-old spat over tweaks to his profile that were interpreted by some as Wales’s attempt to rewrite Wikipedia’s history.

We move on quickly and to the subject at hand. Wales is at the conference centre to talk to an audience of would-be investors about his latest project, The People’s Operator, or TPO for short.

It is a virtual mobile phone company similar to giffgaff that will appeal to society’s givers and helpers and doers. That’s because 10 per cent of the bill goes to the good cause of the subscriber’s choice, while 25 per cent of the firm’s profits, when it starts making them, will be donated to charity. 

The business was set up by Tom Gutteridge, Mark Epstein and the late Andrew Rosenfeld. 

Rosenfeld was known in City circles as the founder of the property firm Minerva; though the politicos will remember him for being embroiled in Labour’s cash for honours scandal.

Wales got involved with TPO after ‘meeting the guys socially’. He joined the board in 2014 as co-chairman.The idea of a commercial enterprise with a social dimension appealed to Wales. 

TPO is able to be so generous because it doesn’t spend millions every year on advertising and marketing. Instead it relies in this digital era on a very old economy method of promotion – word of mouth.

However, with the aid of social media, ventures such as TPO have the potential to grow very, very quickly. ‘Word of mouth between consumers is more powerful than ever before,’ says Wales.

‘If you think about it 40 years ago, if you really loved something, you would probably tell five people.

‘Today if you love something you share it on Facebook. The average person has 314 friends on Facebook.

‘So, the ability for a company to get the word out without spending on TV commercials and all that is very powerful today.

‘So, what we thought is consumers who are interested in supporting their local school, their local church or whatever might be into advocates of the brand, and really that’s what it’s all about.’

While there is no doubting Wales’s altruism, it is a job too; a source of income. For unlike the likes of Google founders Larry Page and Sergei Brin, or Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Wales isn’t an internet billionaire.

In fact some reports put the 49-year-old’s net worth at around $1million, or £685,000 in real money.

You see Wikipedia is a not-for-profit operation that relies on donations, as well as an unpaid army of editors, to get by. So, it is not a money-making machine like Jeff Bezos’s Amazon, and neither has it undergone an over-hyped and over-priced stock market IPO like Twitter, or Alibaba.

Internet giants: Unlike the likes of Google founders Larry Page (right) and Sergei Brin, or Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg (left), Wales isn’t an internet billionaire
Internet giants: Unlike the likes of Google founders Larry Page (right) and Sergei Brin, or Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg (left), Wales isn’t an internet billionaire

Internet giants: Unlike the likes of Google founders Larry Page (right) and Sergei Brin, or Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg (left), Wales isn’t an internet billionaire

Wales’s main commercial venture is Wikia, a free web hosting service for fan sites. It is popular and is ranked 98 by Alexa, the web analytics tool used to measure these things.

Just how much money the business makes is unknown as Wikia is a private company and so doesn’t publish its financial results.

Born in Huntsville, Alabama, Wales now calls London his home, although he is used to travelling to Florida, where his teenage daughter from an earlier marriage is based, and San Francisco, home of Wikia.

He is married to Kate Garvey, once diary secretary to Tony Blair when he was Prime Minister, and who, after leaving Number 10, went on to have successful career in public relations. He has described Garvey, his third wife, as ‘the most connected woman in London’.

The couple have two young children – aged two-and-a-half and four - and live in Notting Hill, an affluent part of west London that used to be home to David Cameron and his family.

The TPO HQ is an office in Shoreditch, an area of east London on the City fringes that has been settled by Britain’s up-and-coming tech companies.

Wales’s stubble doesn’t quite match some of the splendid, almost Victorian beards sported by the skinny chino wearing, sockless, floral shirted male inhabitants of this oh so trendy enclave, but his tree-hugging credentials were recently enhanced when he became an independent director of the Guardian Media Group.

Wales is a regular at the World Economic Forum, a get-together in the Swiss resort of Davos

Wales is a regular at the World Economic Forum, a get-together in the Swiss resort of Davos

He is also a regular at the World Economic Forum, a get-together in the Swiss resort of Davos where heads of state can be found rubbing shoulders with the captains of industry.

Wales has clearly picked a few tips from the politicians when asked about the pitifully small sums of tax paid by internet companies with large operations here in the UK.

‘It is a public policy problem that companies aren’t paying,’ he says.

‘It’s not a level playing field; it’s not fair. I feel beating up on companies as long as they are following the law is a bit misguided.

‘We should be asking the politicians to fix the problem.

‘It seems about time we focused on this issue. Increasingly it is becoming an issue.

‘If we see a UK-based business is at a disadvantage to a global business that’s not healthy for the UK. It’s not fair to anybody.’

Wales’s spare time is spent with his kids. He’s also an avid reader. His Wiki profile reveals he’s a fan of Russian-American author Ayn Rand, who wrote 'The Fountainhead'.

Success: Wikipedia is now the fifth most popular website in the world, Wales said

Success: Wikipedia is now the fifth most popular website in the world, Wales said

Black History Month in the US prompted him to starting reading ‘The Story of the Negro: The Rise of the Race from Slavery’, by Booker T Washington, one of America’s early civil rights activists.

'War and Peace' might be next on the list once the BBC adaptation of the Leo Tolstoy’s epic concludes. ‘I get so lost I keep thinking I should order the book.’

It would be remiss not ask one of the internet’s founding fathers what he reckons the next big thing will be. In fact, his answer is simple and straight to the point; it’s the device he is never without: the mobile phone.

‘For me one of the most impressive trends is the rise of the really inexpensive smartphone,’ he explains.

‘I think this is going to have a huge impact on the world, particularly the developing world.

‘In the developing world in particular people are coming online for the first time using mobile devices.

‘In cultures and societies where they have had limited access to information they suddenly have the entire world in their pocket. I think it is an amazing thing.’

Amazing too has been the growth and longevity of Wikipedia. Did he ever expect to morph into the worldwide success it is today?

‘I always say I’m a pathological optimist. So, I tend to think everything is going to be fine,’ says Wales.

‘I remember in the early days looking at a list of the top 100 websites and seeing an encyclopaedia-style website at 50. I thought if we did a really good job we might get in the top 100.

‘Now Wikipedia is the fifth most popular website in the world so I’d say it has has exceeded my expectations.’ 

 

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Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales on internet firms' tax affairs and his virtual mobile phone company with a social dimension
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