I bought a house and, even though my wife is an interior designer, doing it all up was a really torturous process. I just couldn’t visualise how it would all look or just how much I could expect to pay for stuff. The idea for Mydeco.com was to get everything in one place and help take that stress away.
I’m a believer in creative chaos. I don’t like looking round the room seeing everybody too comfortable.
Customer experience is my obsession. Having that contact with the consumer and seeing the effect you’re having is the most exciting thing about being in business. Getting feedback from customers, both positive and negative, is crucial.
The dark days at lastminute.com only ever resulted from externalities. People in the city were saying we were a bunch of muppets and that it would never work but we had this wonderful growth that kept coming and kept everybody working there really positive.
If the internet hadn’t been invented, I guess I’d be in some kind of retailing. My grandfather started off with one clothes shop and ended up with 650. Seeing him create something like that and watching him go off to work every day with a smile on his face certainly rubbed off on me.
A CEO needs to live and breathe the company, needs to be obsessive and passionate. After eight years at Lastminute, working seven days a week, I decided I couldn’t be the CEO of Mydeco, so I’m executive chairman. It was a very deliberate decision.
To be an entrepreneur you need desire, tenacity and the ability to see around problems. You also need a positive attitude to risk-taking. That means making the decisions and, if need be, picking yourself up when they don’t work out and finding out why.
What Mydeco.com enables people to do is choose from a broader range of products. So yes, we’ll feature big brands and high street names but we’ll also offer small companies you may not have heard of.
If you’re a fast growing company like Lastminute.com with volatile earnings and unpredictable profit streams, being public can be very tough. There was one period where we only grew by 70 per cent and as the CEO, I took the flak for that. That can be very stressful.
You have to make big decisions, especially when you’re losing money. At Lastminute we continued to invest in new technology even though it was very expensive at the time. It was a big bet but the right one.
I’m completely obsessive about detail. Completely.
I’ve also launched PROfounders Capital with Bebo co-founder Michael Birch, Pipex’s Peter Dubens and Jonathan Goodwin of LongAcre Partners. We’ll invest in new entrepreneurs in the digital media and technology industries. To be able to recognise and assist new digital businesses in succeeding will be very exciting.
After the Lastminute deal, I bought a home automation system. It does everything from running my bath to closing the blinds. But it’s so expensive I can’t touch it and I have to get someone out to programme it.
I don’t mind people having a rant in the office. It’s healthy. It shows passion. It shows energy. It shows they care.
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