John Gordon doesn’t do interviews, or at least he hasn’t done many. The co-founder of the world’s most forward thinking debate forum, Intelligence Squared has for the largest part of his career slipped under the media radar, beneath the PR fuelled push that has seen his contemporaries become public personas, though his achievements are just as sizeable. Hence it’s an honour to spend an hour discussing them at the Intelligence Squared headquarters just off Notting Hill Gate, where macs whirr in the background, audio files are looped, edited and rendered, as we sit in a glass walled conference room putting the world to rights.

And what a world it is - one that encompasses a whole host of other businesses (both online and off). There’s Globalista – ‘the ultimate companion for the sophisticated traveller’, Notting Hill Editions, a high brow publishing house specialising in essays from the leading intellectual lights of the 21st century, Contagious (a new media consultancy) and to cap it all there’s the more recent How To Academy, a rosta of bite size courses ‘for people who think big’ on everything from thriller writing to opera – yes there’s a lot to get through.

But to start at the beginning, how did Gordon’s entrepreneurial career actually kick off? Education wise, (‘I’m not a born entrepreneur at all’) he read English at Cambridge swiftly followed by law. After working as a barrister, he side stepped into a corporate finance position at Hambros Bank. ‘I really was a born employee with no aspirations to do my own thing at all,’ he says of the experience, ‘but I just wasn’t a very good employee. Then I went to a job interview with one of my clients, a legendary entrepreneur called Michael Green. He wanted me to come and run his St John’s Wood Studio; a facilities company similar to The Moving Picture Company. It was the beginning of his empire. He was very enthusiastic for me to do it. He said: “I need to put you through a psychometric test.” And in 1983 they never existed – except in the prison service. At the end of it he said: “Look, you’re just not equipped to be an entrepreneur and run your own business. You’re far too intellectual.” It was that failure that inspired me. I needed to prove him wrong.’

And prove him wrong he did, firstly with Xtreme Information - a company which collected and analysed creative and advertising spend data, which he ran from 1984 to 2010, and then with Intelligence Squared which he ran concurrently from 2002 – 2012. Gordon looks back with fond memories on the genesis of Intelligence Squared in particular, the global debate forum intended to, ‘recreate The Oxford or Cambridge Union, and actually bring it to London. We kept on thinking there’s a real need for debate in this country. You read a very good article in The Times on fracking, and actually what you want is the contrary point of view. And so debate, I think, at its best, does exactly that.’

Intelligence Squared certainly pushed the boundaries of the intelligentsia’s status quo, bringing a whole new ethos of intellectual self interest to a generation hungry for learning - for the ‘luxury of a beautifully crafted lecture.’ Just don’t mention TED, their main (though Gordon is quick to assert) very different competitor. ‘The difference with TED – and we’re very competitive is, well, it was one thing and now it’s become another thing. I think originally it was much more about the zeitgeist. Some of the TED Talks are inspiring, a lot of them are very interesting, but what they don’t allow, fundamentally, is questioning. Nor is there any political component to what they do. A Ted talk will often feature someone extolling their work in Africa and that as a mantra aid to Africa at TED is a good thing. This is contestable as for many people aid to Africa is not universally a good thing. So for Intelligence Squared this would be as it has been the subject of a debate rather than a given.'

A seismic achievement in his history, but to mix metaphors, despite being the feather in his cap it’s also time for pastures new, and Intelligence Squared has of course segued into the eclectic range of businesses now taking priority in his quite sizeable attention span – but how on earth does he fit this all in? ‘I just wake up incredibly early,’ he laughs. ‘I’ve made one mistake on The How To Academy already, which I think in my enthusiasm programming far too many events. I think I’ve got forty between now and October. Part of the reason for that is if we’re just did 0-5 it wouldn’t have shown the range, the ambition, the scope of what we wanted to do.’

Downsizing is another important factor because, having handed over the reins of Intelligence Squared in 2012 to ‘a new team with new ideas and new energy. I’ve done so many events on Israel or Iran that the idea of doing another one just scares me’, Gordon has eschewed the twenty fold staff of yesteryear for a ‘can do’ - ‘do it yourself’ approach. If you email the info address at the How To Academy it’ll be him typing out a response at 11pm (even on a bank holiday).

The three online businesses he is currently focused on (Globalista, The How To Academy and Notting Hill Editions; Contagious sees him in an advisory role) ‘follow in the pattern of things that I’ve been interested in (having been earlier involved with The Week Magazine) about the compression of knowledge and how there is just so much information on the web.’ Globalista provides the sophisticated traveller with ‘an action plan so that I don’t have to just trawl and cross reference and go on Condé Nast Traveler, then go to Trip Advisor, then phone a friend.’ The travel recommendation site is ‘designed to be the ultimate guide to being opinionated without trying to make its money from booking hotels for you,’ and is soon to be relaunched as a destination domain; an almost an anti-guide if you will. ‘That’s what we’re increasingly going to be doing: this is where not to stay, this is where not to eat, this is where not to explore – as well as making recommendations.’

This subversive approach to branding leads us onto the second part of the interview, which I so badly want to call: John Gordon’s life lessons (a half hour filled with sound-bite dynamite). Number one: ‘I don’t know what being an entrepreneur really means. What I do think is really important if you want to be an entrepreneur or start a business is: have lots of lunches. Everything that happens, happens over lunch. Breakfast is the time where you’re already having business with someone. You tend not to meet people for breakfast who you’ve never met before. And supper – you don’t really want to talk about business at all. Everything I’ve ever done - it just happened at lunch.’

Number two: ‘Being an entrepreneur is actually just thinking that everything is important. If one thinks of a job as being exciting, then yes, go and be a barrister because every single case is going to be exciting… Running a business is fundamentally boring. I find it hugely exciting… It’s like an orchestra: you’re the conductor and you’ve got to bring every single component in, whether it’s the office cleaning to the computing to anything that you’re not really interested in.’

Other tips for the running of successful business affairs include: ‘IPad Minis because I really do think it has radically changed the whole dynamics. I can’t use an iPhone and set the time properly, but IPad Minis have revolutionised one’s ability to be working 24 hours a day.’

Then there are the whole host of tips he has for those wanting to follow in his rather refined footsteps; ‘I’ve been lucky enough to create the How To Academy, a business which doesn’t require a huge amount of money and I’ve funded it all myself. Young people don’t have the money to go and do it, and so they go to friends and family and so forth. One of the main lessons is just make sure you have enough money, because there’s nothing worse than running out and suddenly scurrying around in order to raise it on terms that just don’t work.’

Then there’s financing; ‘I think financing is absolutely critical, and getting the right financing. And understanding your options. I think a lot of young people don’t understand the EIS (Enterprise Investment Scheme) or the SEIS (The Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme), and all the varieties of different funding that are available. I’m awash with advice for young people, and I’m awash with advice mainly because I just made so many mistakes.’

Gordon has certainly gone beyond the call of duty to help the next generation, a factor perfectly illustrated by a response from a friend to my Facebook update posted on the day of our interview: ‘Lovely man got me my first job.’

This admiration is surely in no small part down to his razor sharp wit combined with ruthless honesty – a cocktail more sprightly than a mouthful of Cherry Fizz Whizz Popping Candy. Take the following on recruiting staff: ‘I make some brilliant decisions and I make some terrible ones. A lot of it is through recommendation. It’s incredibly difficult, because everyone’s CV is really good. I need a week and unfortunately you can’t really test someone out for a week. People win a lot of brownie points in my employment now if they can write in English – which actually by and large is generally not the case.’

What more is there to say? Aside from being exacting, driven and utterly charming, John Gordon is a hoot. But on a more serious note (and to come full circle), what does he see as his greatest achievement? ‘Certainly Intelligence Squared,’ he says with conviction. ‘I’m really proud of having created that with Jeremy O’Grady. It’s gone global and it gives a lot of pleasure to people. As a business, I’m particularly pleased with Contagious. I do think that that has become something really exciting. The How To Academy, it’s early days, but the degree of interest in the idea has been huge; so I think we’ve hit on a rich seam of passion for learning.’

Interview by Alice Kahrmann

11 September 2013