Growing up, he lived with his grandparents in Leicester, sharing a bunk bed with his single mother. Eight years ago, James Ison launched a website marrying two new obsessions: Instagram and super-rich millennials. Now he's fast becoming wealthy himself – and onto his latest way to make even more money. Jessie Hewitson meets him.
In 2012, a 19-year-old living in a grotty student flat above a shop in Oxford posted a picture on Instagram of a 15-year-old on a private jet tucking into a sumptuous buffet en route to a family holiday in Fiji.
This was the first post of the now notorious Rich Kids of Instagram (RKOI), a social media account dedicated to collating images from other social media accounts of the world's most affluent youths hard at work reclining on their Lamborghinis or sunning themselves on superyachts.
Its success was near-instant – within a week of launching, RKOI's images were featured in the New York Times and on the TV channels CNBC and NBC; the UK press caught up a few months later – and over time, a certain type of rich kid saw being featured on the account as a badge of honour.
Tiffany Trump, the daughter of the US president, is a RKOI, as people who feature on the account are known, pictured hanging out by the pool and on the Trump private plane; as is Christian Combs, the son of the rapper Sean "P Diddy" Combs, and Daria Radionova, rumoured to be one of the richest kids of all on the channel.
Radionova, the daughter of Moldovan "business people" – no more details are known – is said to have bought a £50,000 ($100,000) Mercedes while living in London, spent £15,000 ($30,000) encrusting it in Swarovski crystals, then auctioned off the car to fund the rebuilding of a dog shelter that had burnt down in London, and another one in Moldova. (Fear not for car-less Daria, however, as she went on to buy a Lamborghini and covered that in Swarovski crystals too.)
Until recently, nothing was known about the dark genius who started the channel. The consensus was that it had to be someone rich and young themselves – possibly an American heiress. The founder's anonymity was intriguing, but it was assumed there was a purpose behind it. Not everyone whose picture is reposted on RKOI – now renamed Rich Kids of the Internet after Facebook sent a legal letter shortly before it acquired Instagram – is delighted to be there.
We're like an Ask Jeeves for the 0.1 per cent. It sounds arrogant, but the 1 per cent isn't that wealthy in our world.
The young man at the buffet in that first picture was Zachary Dell, son of the computer billionaire Michael Dell. Zachary's image was originally posted by his sister Alexa on her Instagram page. RKOI's reposting of it "caused things to go nuclear" within the Dell family, a source told The Times at the time. "Dell spends about $3 million a year on private security, and his kids were undermining it by broadcasting too much information on social media."
Within the past few months, however, the truth came out. And it was unexpected, to say the least. The founder was no public-school princess from New York or a Cristal-sipping film director's daughter from Los Angeles, but a 27-year old man from Rugby, in the Midlands. When he collects me from the train station for his first main interview since outing himself, he arrives not in a Maserati but in a Volvo. It is mildly disappointing, but at least we get to Starbucks safely.
James Ison is on his way to becoming a rich kid of the internet himself – more of which later – but growing up, it was a life he could only imagine. He was raised in his grandparents' bungalow in Leicester, shared a bedroom and bunk beds with his single mum and holidayed in a caravan in Ringwood, Dorset. He has moved back to his grandparents', who now live on a farm 15 minutes from Rugby station.
In person, Ison comes across as a standard, likeable millennial. The only hint of his social-media credentials is the heavy Tag Heuer watch on his wrist. (He also has a Rolex and a Hublot Big Bang. The latter now sells for between £34,000 and £37,000, although he insists that his cost "a little less".)
He has become friends with some of the rich kids whose pictures he reposts, for whom he acts as a tour guide to normal life. Ison describes taking Sophia Rothschild to Primark – she couldn't believe how busy it was. He was also asked to book a table at Frankie & Benny's for a multimillionaire client on a first date, who didn't want the date to know how wealthy he was. This is part of the tragedy, if you like, of being insanely wealthy: you can never be sure if someone likes you or has fallen in love with you for you or your bank balance.
As a student, studying economics at Oxford Brookes, Ison had no idea of the downside of being loaded. To him, it seemed the dream, which is why he started a site reposting pictures from this world. It just so happened that at the same time, on the other side of the Pond, two New Yorkers were doing something similar. They messaged him, suggesting they collaborate, and RKOI was born.
The success of the Instagram account was enough to make Ison and his silent partners – who are still anonymous – a comfortable living. Far from being unwilling subjects, the children of millionaires and billionaires now pay up to US$2,000 ($3,000) a go to feature on the page to raise their social-media profile.
Now, however, sensing that the Facebook-owned photo-sharing app isn't going to be popular for ever, he has embarked on a more lucrative project still. Rather than simply sharing photos of the global elite on the internet, he plans to cater to their every whim in real life.
He has launched RKOI Concierge, and is working for some of the same rich kids featured on the channel.
While Quintessentially is the go-to concierge service for many wealthy parents and grandparents – the company was co-founded by Ben Elliot, the nephew of the Duchess of Cornwall, and a supremely well-connected Old Etonian, in 2000 – the cool kids go to Ison, whom they trust as one of their own.
"We're kind of like an Ask Jeeves for the 0.1 per cent," he says. "It sounds arrogant, but the 1 per cent isn't that wealthy in our world."
View this post on InstagramSunday lunch vibes 🍕 🍷 📸 @alexander_dgr8
A post shared by Rich Kids Of The Internet (@rkoi) on
His decision to come out of the shadows now is all about growing this new side of the business. He hires private jets – now more sought after than ever by the wealthy, as they seek to keep their social distance on holiday as only they can – supercars and yachts, and buys £250,000 ($501,000) Hermès handbags for his clients. For this, he takes a commission, which can be between £2,000 and £10,000 ($4,000 and $20,000) for organising a private jet one-way (he books between six to eight a week).
His team – one in the UK, along with six people overseas, whom he calls on when he needs them – recently "begged, borrowed and stole" to get their hands on Dior's Air Jordans. These are said to be the priciest trainers ever, which originally sold for US$1,800 ($2,700) – only 8,000 pairs were made – but then were sold on for as much as £19,000 ($2,700), a figure he says is "obscene".
"To be in with a chance to buy [the trainers], you had to get a lottery ticket, and in order to get the lottery ticket, you had to have a certain amount of buying power or market reach. Our network of personal shoppers all had tickets. But really it came down to relationships. We did get a pair of trainers for a client."
Then there are the more unusual requests. Ison once managed to arrange for a client to have dinner with his girlfriend alone in a restaurant in the Eiffel Tower after hours on a Sunday, at a cost of £25,000 ($50,000). The man phoned up at 8pm – 9pm French time – and wanted it to happen that evening. "It was insane, but we got him in there by 9.30pm because there was early closing on a Sunday."
Other bizarre demands include chartering a jet for £30,000 ($60,000) just to bring a dog on holiday, and sourcing a helicopter to deliver a steak takeaway dinner to a yacht in Cannes. One client asked if Ison could get Ariana Grande to sing for her daughter (then the coronavirus pandemic scuppered his plans).
Another, last summer, wanted him to find a leopard to show off at his 21st birthday party in a London hotel. "He's from Dubai, so I was just like, 'The thing is, mate, in London we don't do that,' " says Ison.
Footballers tend to be a nightmare – although he did recently organise a car for a very nice Premier League player – and he does not say yes to every request. He drew the line recently at arranging for the wife of a French billionaire to be seduced into having an affair so that her husband could divorce her more cheaply. Ison plays me a voicemail from the man's PA, who manages to make the request sound like the most reasonable thing in the world. Although Ison balked at the mission, he did seek advice from another client, who told him of one German agency that specialises in such things. "There is a market for anything," he says.
View this post on InstagramHmmm 🤔 comment your response to @daily.st 👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻
A post shared by Rich Kids Of The Internet (@rkoi) on
Channel 4 made a documentary entitled Rich Kids of Instagram in 2015, then a six-part series the following year, without any collaboration with Ison or his partners. He was not impressed with the rich kids they followed; they weren't – speaking very relatively, of course – that wealthy. Pre-coronavirus, he was in discussions with a production company about doing something similar for Netflix. Locations have been discussed.
Ison is surprisingly moral for someone who works in the shallow world of the internet. As well as being aghast at the price of handbags, he is horrified at the idea of featuring pictures of stacks of notes gained by fraudsters ripping people off. He also draws the line at featuring pet tigers or kids drinking champagne out of a shoe (some of the pictures that rich kids post).
"Some people send us pictures of them on a bed with a couple of million dollars in cash. It's like: 'That's not tasteful. Where's the money coming from?' We don't want to promote criminal activity. But we're also not completely innocent. I know how Instagram works. Unfortunately, we live in a world where, if I were to stand next to a Lamborghini or a Peugeot, I know which post is going to get more likes and comments. A very famous influencer in LA ate some cereal out of a pair of US$20,000 ($30,200) Air Dior trainers. We posted it and it went viral."
When I ask why his clients use him, Ison's answer is simple: they trust him. "When you're wealthy, everyone sees you as a meal ticket. It's isolating." He's seen as part of this world and they trust him not to rip them off.
After the interview I look at the RKOI account again, and feel amusement at the sheer ludicrousness of it. Then I watch a video of a rich "kid" man shouting at length at a parking valet who had taken his Lamborghini out for a spin. While the valet had done something wrong, there was an uncomfortable power balance at play. The young man was publicly shamed by the wealthy owner of the car, then shamed all over again when it was put on the internet.
That video, a few years old, made the shouty man well known on Instagram. Famous people took sides. Some agreed with him; others not.
"How I view it is: if someone took my $600,000 Lamborghini Aventador joyriding, I wouldn't be happy," Ison says. "I understand it's not an everyday car, and that people would see driving it as a once-in-a-lifetime thing.
But it doesn't matter if it's an Aventador or a Peugeot; it's still someone else's property. The depreciation value is huge. Throwing a couple of extra miles on the clock costs money. If you break them, it's a lot of money to replace. That guy wouldn't have been insured. I think it was mainly the fact that this man didn't ask; he just did it."
My hunch is that the man who grew up sharing a bedroom with his mum – who incidentally has a job as the head of speed awareness, which may explain why Ison always observes the speed limit, even when he drives a Lamborghini to drop it off at a client's hotel – knows that it's not entirely OK. But he also knows his clickbait and what will grow the profile of his account. He is on the side of the rich kids now, an honorary member of their world.
Would he trade his relatively modest childhood for those of his wealthy clients? His answer is no. "Because I have perspective. Some of my clients understand that they're wearing a ring that is worth more than someone's house, but others don't. They can't fathom economy on a plane, or taking an Uber. The old saying, 'More money, more problems', is definitely true. Growing up, you're very sheltered. You only mix with people in the same demographic. I meet 16-year-old kids who know about champagne. Really? I think, 'Shouldn't you be talking about Love Island?' "
And with that, the interview over, Ison drops me off at the station in his Volvo and drives off at a sensible speed to be at the beck and call of his next moneyed client.
Written by: Jessie Hewitson
© The Times of London
