When Simon Nixon founded price comparison websiteMoneysupermarket.com, he had no idea that 14 years later,he’d be floating it on the stock market for £850 million.

“I didn’t even consider it,” says the 45-year-oldentrepreneur, who talks quickly and animatedly, with aninfectious enthusiasm. “I never sat down and drew up a bigbusiness plan. I just thought, this is something thatcustomers are going to want.”

Today Nixon, who still owns a 54 per cent stake in thecompany, is worth a cool £536 million, according to thisyear’s Sunday Times Rich List – not bad for a man who grewup in a town in Wales with some of the highestunemployment levels in Britain.

Born in Nottinghamshire, Nixon’s father’s job designingparts for jets in the RAF led the family to relocate to Germanybefore finally settling in Connah’s Quay, which Nixon describesas “a humble little working-class town in North Wales”.

“We were totally working class,” he says. “My dad alwayshad work, but he was supporting a family of me, my brotherand my mother. We weren’t on the breadline by any stretchof the imagination, but money was tight.”

Nixon’s mother died when he was just 18, which hebelieves is partly what has driven him to achieve so much. “If you lose your mum, you’ve got no one to fall back on,” hesays. “So you’ve really got to make it on your own.”

He enrolled at Nottingham University after leaving school,but dropped out of his accountancy degree after two years.“I loved being a student, the social life and theindependence. But I really hated the course and had nopassion for it. It just wasn’t for me,” he says.

“I loved writing poetry and essays and I should havepursued that. But I felt if I’d done an English degree, it wouldhave been so hard to get work. You’d have to become awriter or a journalist, and it’s so competitive.”

Faced with a two-week ultimatum from his father to eitherfind work or get kicked out of the house, he scoured the jobsection of the local newspaper, where he spotted an advertfor a financial consultant role.

“I didn’t even know what it meant, but it said ‘unlimitedearnings’. I was 20 and I thought, that sounds really good.Then I realised ‘financial consultant’ was a high-poweredname for a mortgage salesperson.”

He got the job and ended up “sticking at it for a bit” toplease his dad, but in spite of his initial ambivalence, it wasn’tlong before he discovered he had a real talent for sales.

“At that time, a lot of people wanted to buy a propertybut they couldn’t find a mortgage,” he explains. “So I did adeal with a local builder and said, if I can help your clients get

Investing inthe right sites

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mortgages, that should improve your home sales. “It really worked, and we found that I could get a lot of

people mortgages who thought they couldn’t get them. Istarted getting quite a lot of business from these builders,and I became top salesperson in the office, just by thinkinglaterally.”

Soon he spotted another gap in the market. “At that timethere was nothing to help me, as a mortgage adviser, to findthe best deal for my clients. I had to phone round all thedifferent banks and building societies, which I thought wascrazy.”

Nixon bought an Apple Mac and then designed andbegan printing a fortnightly mortgage magazine for brokers,which compiled all the available mortgage rates into onepublication. In just four months, he was earning enoughmoney to quit his job in sales.

As computers became widespread, the magazine wasreplaced with a disk. “It sounds archaic now,” he laughs.“But it really took off, and it saved me loads of moneybecause rather than printing a magazine, we just sent a diskout in the post.”

Then the disk became a modem. “The brokers couldn’tdo without it, they were totally reliant on us,” says Nixon. “Ifour servers went down with an issue for a few hours, theycouldn’t work.”

By this time it seemed as though the company couldn’tgrow any further. “The business plateaued – we had about10,000 subscribers, 60 staff and I was looking for where wecould take it,” says Nixon.

Then he spotted an opportunity that would change hisbusiness forever. Broadband was becoming widely availablein the UK, replacing the exasperatingly slow dial-up modemswith a service that was ten times faster and didn’t disrupt thephone line.

“I thought, wouldn’t it be great to take our mortgage-sourcing product, put it online and empower consumers byallowing them to compare mortgages?” says Nixon. “Theycould fill in their criteria, see what was available, and find thebest deal.”

He named the website Moneysupermarket.com and in1999, it was launched online. “We changed the marketplace,because providers had to start cutting their rates to competefor customers for the first time,” he says. “We’d broughttransparency.”

The website, which makes its money through commissionfees from banks, quickly expanded to include other financialproducts, such as loans, credit cards, savings and currentaccounts, as well as spin-off website Travelsupermarket.

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MONEYSUPERMARKET.COM FOUNDER SIMONNIXON MAY HAVE TAKEN A STEP BACK FROMHIS GROUNDBREAKING PRICE COMPARISONSITE, BUT HE’S NOT SLOWING DOWN. HETELLS KATE WHITE ABOUT HIS NEW BUSINESSIN LUXURY HOLIDAY LETS, SIMONESCAPES

SIMON NIXON

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“I knew it wasn’t only about how well we executed theidea,” says Nixon, “but also, we had to grow it really fast andput the accelerator down, because people were going tocopy us, and they have done.

“You’ve got Confused and GoCompare and so on, butthey came to the market a lot later than us, and because wehad first-mover advantage, we’re still the biggest pricecomparison website in the world.”

Floating the business was the “right thing”, he says. “A lotof our staff had shareholdings in the business, and the onlyway for them to take money out was for us to float it. So Iowed it to the staff who had worked really hard.”

Today Moneysupermarket has a workforce of 600, andafter two years as chief executive, Nixon is now deputychairman. However, far from scaling back his workload, hehas used the extra time to start up another business.

SimonEscapes is a luxury holiday lets company, with aportfolio of cherry-picked properties redeveloped to thehighest standard. They range from a country house in theCotswolds to a villa in Deià, Mallorca, a favourite of AndrewLloyd Webber.

“The idea for SimonEscapes came from the fact that allmy money was tied up in Moneysupermarket, which was avirtual internet business that I couldn’t touch or feel,” saysNixon.

“When I floated it on the stock market, I sold a lot of myshares and took some money off the table. Obviously Ineeded to invest it, so I thought, why not put a chunk of itinto bricks and mortar?”

“I’ve always been really passionate about visiting greatlocations. I thought it would be great if I could combine thatwith property, by building and renovating really high-endholiday lets.”

One of the latest properties he is developing is abeachside house in Barbados. “I go to Barbados every twoor three months now to meet with the architect, the interiordesigner and the project managers, to make sureeverything’s on track,” he says.

“After an eight-hour flight from the UK where I’ve leftbehind a blizzard of snow and rain, when I get off the planein Barbados, the first thing I do is go to the sea, dip my toe in the water and I feel like I’m relaxing and I’m away from it all.”

In spite of his immense success, the entrepreneurdescribes himself as an insecure person. “Entrepreneurs aredriven by insecurity,” he says. “What drives me is notsuccess, it’s fear of failure.

“I feel guilty when I’m not working, which is a terriblehabit. If I was on the beach all day every day, I’d feel soguilty.” And besides, he points out, working onSimonEscapes isn’t exactly a grind.

“I don’t see going to Barbados as a hardship,” he laughs.“I’ll get up at seven in the morning, go for a swim in the sea,have a nice breakfast and then my meeting will start at halfnine on the beach.

“I’m more balanced now, I don’t work 14-hour days in anoffice,” he adds. “I’m out and about, and I enjoy that a lotmore.

“I probably work almost as many hours as I used tobecause I’m always thinking, but I’m thinking and working inreally nice environments and combining what I love – travel tonice places and good food – with work I enjoy. It’s the best ofboth worlds.”

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“[Moneysupermarket.com]changed the marketplace,because providers had tostart cutting their rates tocompete for customersfor the first time. We’dbrought transparency”

Simon Nixon

BUSINESS: Erik Brownerik.brown@pubbiz.com