HOTSEAT NICK THISTLETON
Customers typically hire the private rooms for two hours
Our best ever celebrity story was when we had Paul and Stella McCartney in a pod with Chris Martin and Gwyneth Paltrow. Chris Martin and Paul McCartney duetted on YMCA
How was the idea for Lucky Voice born? During her days at Spectrum Strategy Consultants, Martha Lane Fox was posted out to places like South Korea and Japan. The standard after-work entertainment was karaoke in private rooms, which planted the idea in her head. A few years down the track she had some money to invest; she went out to a karaoke bar in London and was reminded of the idea.
What was your initial reaction when she suggested launching a private karaoke bar? I was uncertain at first. I didn’t quite get the connection between karaoke and fun – I guess I was guilty of thinking about the stigma attached to pub-style karaoke. Martha took me out for a night out at a karaoke bar, where it was just me and her in a room, and
ISSUE 3 2013 © cybertrek 2013
it completely changed my opinion. In my piano playing days, I would often get dragged to the piano at parties and made to play, with peo- ple gathering around for a drunken sing song. I realised that karaoke is the same concept, just with different technology – a karaoke machine, versus someone playing the piano. I sat in that bar and thought, this is the same as people drunkenly singing around a piano – I know how much everyone loves that. It was an instant switch from being a bit uncertain to being very confident that this was worth investing a chunk of my life in.
Can you sum up what Lucky Voice offers? We coined the term private kara- oke to distinguish it from what tends to come into people’s heads when they think about karaoke – basically,
not much more than a slightly embarrassing night at the pub. Our first venue opened in Soho in June 2005. It had nine rooms, all kit- ted out with state-of-the-art technology. It has a touch screen system where customers can easily search and cue up the songs they want to sing, a big screen with the lyrics on it, a nice sound system and wireless micro- phones and a ‘thirsty’ button people press for a waitress drinks service. Typically people book those rooms for two hours. They come along, order drinks and sing to their hearts’ con- tent. The smallest room is for four people and the biggest is for 12.
How difficult was it to get the business off the ground? It was a bit of an instant success, really. There was quite a lot of buzz around the opening of the Soho bar.
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