Also known as Joey Bann

Joseph Bannister

Joey is the founder of Untapped Society. He is also the person who plans the seating at the dinners, decides who is invited into a House, and answers the messages at eleven at night. The club has grown quickly and he has deliberately not stepped back from any of that, because the part he does personally is the part that makes it work.

Diagnosed with autism at eight years old, Joseph spent six years in a special education needs school. He describes it now as the thing that taught him to read a room properly. Where most people arrive at a table and perform, he arrives and pays attention: who is uncomfortable, who has not spoken, which two people have not realised yet that they need each other. An unusual amount of what Untapped does well traces back to that.

He is not a networker by temperament. He built a private members club because he could not find one that felt honest, and because the alternative was watching people he cared about stay lonely in rooms that were technically full.

What follows is his own account of how Untapped Society was built, and of what he intends it to change.

Joseph Bannister hosting at an Untapped Society gathering

Joseph Bannister, founder of Untapped Society.

Three reasons

Why Untapped exists.

Untapped was not built as a business first. It was built as an answer: to a loss, to a gap in our community, and to a world that still has a long way to travel.

01

For Chad

Where it began

Chad is the reason this exists. A friend, a memory, and a quiet promise that the loneliness so many gay men carry in silence would not go unanswered.

Joey has been open that Untapped did not start as an idea about business. It started with the recognition that a person can be surrounded by people and still be entirely alone, and that our community is unusually good at hiding exactly that. Every design decision in this club comes back to it. Small rooms rather than large ones. Several days rather than one evening. Seating planned so nobody is left standing at the edge. A guest list built by a person who knows what it costs to walk into a room and know no one.

Untapped is built so that no one we love is left to navigate that alone again.

02

A better gay community

The standard being set

We are building the community we wished existed. One defined by depth, ambition, kindness and trust, where gay men meet as equals.

There is no shortage of places for gay men to gather. There is a real shortage of places built around character, ambition and genuine friendship, where the currency is what you bring rather than how you look on a given night. Untapped sets that standard deliberately and enforces it through who is let in. Members support one another's lives and work, hold each other to something, and raise what this community is capable of being.

03

Rights, everywhere

The work beyond our doors

Our work does not end at our own doors. From regions where being gay is still criminalised to places where progress is fragile, Untapped uses its network, resources and voice to push for dignity, safety and equal rights.

This is the part of the mission that a members club is unusually well placed to serve. The Society brings together people with capital, reach and access to government across the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe, the UAE and Asia. Used deliberately, that is leverage. The Untapped Future Foundation and Fund carries this forward through grants and resources for the next generation of gay founders, and through mental health work inside our own community.

If these reasons are also yours, there is a place for you here.

From Bali to Beverly Hills

The Journey

01

Built alone, across cities

Joseph spent a year building Untapped Society on his own, creating concepts from Bali to London, Beverly Hills to Nashville, and on into Miami, New York and other territories across the US and the wider world.
02

Los Angeles, planned from Europe

He planned and coordinated the first event in Los Angeles from Europe with no prior knowledge of the city, managing to create concepts from the other side of the world. He recently ran an event in Malibu remotely, demonstrating his ability to orchestrate sophisticated experiences across continents.
03

A level of luxury

A big fan of Michelin restaurants, Joseph was inspired to bring a level of luxury to the community. The first event was a six-course Michelin guide dim sum restaurant private dining experience, followed by working with the Four Seasons Park Lane for a 2-star Michelin French dining experience featuring 6 courses.
04

Private homes

Joseph likes to work out of private homes to curate extra special and personal experiences that make it possible for those to join and connect with like-minded individuals, facilitating meaningful connections in intimate settings.

“Untapped’s current and future endeavours are a means to create a better gay community. To install healthy boundaries and a new level of respect in parallel of setting the tone with other countries and communities around gay people with the intention to protect our rights and the next generation.”
Joseph Bannister

Joseph Bannister photographed on the lawn of a private residence

What Joseph has built

Proven impact.

In under two years, from a standing start, with no investor and no inherited list. What follows is what that has actually produced.

250+ members
$555M combined ecosystem net worth
$400M+ of property used for events
Four continents

01

Friendships, first

The measure Joey actually cares about. Members who arrived knowing nobody and now travel to see each other, stand at each other's events and answer each other's calls. Business follows friendship in this club, and never the reverse.

02

Business between members

Partnerships formed, hires made, capital raised and companies entered into new markets, almost all of it originating at a table Joey laid out personally. He takes no cut of any of it. The club is the product, not the deal flow.

03

A room that spans continents

Members across the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe, the UAE and Asia, hand selected one at a time. Any member landing in most major cities now has someone to call, which is precisely the thing that did not exist before.

04

A standard, held

Every application is still read personally and a great many are declined. That is the impact people notice least and feel most, because it is the reason the room is worth being in at all.

Vision & leadership

Where this is going.

Joey is unusually clear that the members club is a means rather than an end. The club funds and powers the thing he actually set out to do.

The plan he describes runs in three parts. First, build a room of gay men operating at a genuinely high level and make it the best room of its kind anywhere, which is the work of the next few years. Second, use that room: its capital, its access and its reach into government and investment across five regions, to move on rights and safety in the places where being gay is still dangerous. Third, send it downward, through the Untapped Future Foundation and Fund, into grants, mentorship and mental health support for the next generation of gay founders who will not have to start where he did.

His leadership style is worth understanding before you apply, because you will encounter it directly. He hosts personally. He declines people personally. He is more interested in whether you will look after the person sitting next to you than in what your company is worth. Members describe him as warm and genuinely immovable on the standard, and both of those things are load bearing.

01

Global standards

A blueprint for respect, sophistication and elevated behaviour that travels across countries and communities, and does not soften depending on the city.

02

Future generations

Healthy boundaries and high expectations, set now, so the next generation of gay professionals inherits something better than the one before it did.

03

Meaningful connection

Spaces where real relationships and real opportunity grow out of the same ground, held together by mutual respect rather than by transaction.

Membership by application only

Every application is read by a person.

Tell us what you are building and where you want to be standing a year from now. Joey and the membership team read every application themselves, and everyone who applies hears back either way.

Apply for membership

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About Our Founder