EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW
Inspired by luxury
airline travel and Japanese space economy, Woodroff e launched Yotel in 2007 with the aim of creating futuristic and aff ordable luxury hotels in prime locations across the world
Everyone’sO
going into the app business, but on the few occasions I do look at statistics, very few of them make it and succeed at the big level.
U come from dreams,” he says. “But it could be
We’ve always had inventive people and I think our future lies with innovation
you have an experience somewhere, baggage handling or whatever it is, and you’re angry that it’s so badly done. Anger is quite a useful thing to have if you want to correct it and make something better – that incensed feeling ‘I could do that better’. “I kept a notebook. If you want to start any
business, all you have to do is get a notebook and start writing an idea down,” he says. “And I kept a notebook with lots of ideas. One of them was extreme fi lms of extreme sports, another was indoor climbing walls and I had those and I was developing them.” One
factor start-ups consider when
beginning their adventure is monitoring industry performance. Woodroff e doesn’t feel going into the rapidly expanding app industry is as fruitful as the façade suggests. “Everyone’s going into the app business, but
on the few occasions I do look at statistics – yes, few of them fail – but very few of them make it and succeed at the big level. So, an opportunity I see is anything that is not an app. A good solution? “The funeral business.” He
says bluntly. “It will never go away.” “Most people say, ‘oh, I don’t want to get
involved in that,’ but what a great thing. Fundamentally, if there’s one thing we’re all scared of, it’s how we die. Another upcoming industry is wellness [but] there are so many things you can go into.” But Woodroff e doesn’t want you to take his advice. He has never believed a good idea is
one because others have told him so. “If I had done market research [instead] and said do you want to eat raw fi sh on a conveyor belt served by robots, you wouldn’t have said yes,” he says.
“It would be the same answer if I asked if you wanted to stay in a hotel that charges by the hour and has no natural light. But when we opened that fi rst one at Gatwick Airport, people came in and said, ‘this is so obvious, why didn’t somebody think of this before?’
Britain is no longer a nation of
shopkeepers, but of entrepreneurs
Twenty-one years after his fi rst restaurant
opening, Woodroff e is still dreaming. This time the latest project is Yo! Home, set to be revealed early next year in what is a re-imagination of urban living – taking inspiration from Japanese micro-apartments. He also mentors young entrepreneurs – investing his time rather than his cash. “I’ve always made time for people and I made
a declaration to myself many years ago when I used to phone people up, and they wouldn’t answer my calls or wouldn’t return my calls, that if I ever got to be successful I would be there for other people and mentor them [though] I’m not a big investor anymore.”
One of the bigger concerns for start-ups and
SMEs now, is the current political and economic uncertainties surrounding Brexit, especially for exporters. But Woodroff e still believes there is no better time to get going. “Britain is no longer a nation of shopkeepers,
but a nation of entrepreneurs,” he says. “I travel a lot and, despite all the worries of Brexit, people really like us. We were explorers and traders all over the world and I think we have that in our DNA. “We’ve always had inventive people and
I think our future lies with innovation. We as a nation have good taste in all the design areas. “I think in a hundred years’ time we’ll be
at the forefront of the sciences, the arts and design – and these won’t be achieved by big corporations but by creative individuals who can do amazing things.” He, for one, hopes to be included in helping
provide that long-term legacy with his newest venture, Yo! Home. These new apartments (expected to open
next year) economise space, while presenting high-end design. Pocket kitchens can be folded away into the walls and tables can emerge
from the fl oor. “With Yo! Home, hopefully that will be hit
number three. There’s been a few which haven’t worked out but if you have three hits under the same name, you’re on your way. I’m 66 and still got a few years left in me and I’m thoroughly enjoying it.”
B. Be Your Own Boss distributed with 11
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