During his visit to the island last week to personally launch the 2010 Stelios Award for Business Co-operation in Cyprus, founder of easyJet and serial entrepreneur, Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou spoke to Charles Charalambous.
How do you think the Award scheme is going so far?
I think it was extremely interesting to see the five winners from last year at Monday’s networking event, and hear how they’ve done since they got the money. Four out of the five said “it’s gone well, we had extra liquidity to do this or that.”
The most fascinating example was one company that manufactures PVC window frames in the north and sells mainly to expatriates building houses in the south. They had been able to run their business without too much interference from the authorities until now, but then the Award raised their profile, and they discovered that they are missing a quality standard certificate for their factory.
This means they have to spend more money to put their factory through the certification process. That’s not necessarily a bad thing – at the end of the day, you have to follow the rules. Even big companies sometimes don’t know the rules. These are entrepreneurs, so like me and my start-ups, you learn by doing. You don’t start by hiring 50 lawyers to tell you exactly what’s allowed and what’s not – you try something, and if that doesn’t work out, you try something else.
So raising the profile of a business goes both ways. It makes you more marketable, but you also have to follow the rules – it’s all part of growing up and learning how to solve the problems.
Would you describe yourself as a ‘gut-feel’ businessman, someone who makes a decision first and then gets the data to support it, or do you analyse a lot of data first before making a decision?
I have discovered – a bit like my award winners – that as your profile rises you have to be a bit more careful. I now spend more money on lawyers than before, but if you have more to lose, that’s just a fact of life. None of my businesses started with me hiring [business consulting firm] McKinsey or a market research company to tell me whether it’s going to work or not.
Besides, there are so many different ways of framing the question. Imagine asking in 1994: “Would you fly on an orange airplane run by a Greek between Luton and Glasgow for £29?” Of course not – and yet it worked.
On the other hand, at the height of the dot-com bubble, I did some research on the internet, and it said that the internet would grow and people would go to an internet café to use it. But what they didn’t appreciate was that four or five years later, you can have the internet in your pocket, on your mobile phone.
They say that the most creative age – in business, the arts or sport – is 29. I started easyJet just before my 29th birthday. You are old enough to have enough experience to know what you are doing, but not too old, therefore you don’t appreciate all the risks – you’re young enough to underestimate the risks.
Your father gave you a helping hand to start up easyJet. Would you do the same for your children? How far would you go to help them?
It’s difficult. You want your son to go to Luton to start an airline, but you don’t want him to go and then come back with his tail between his legs. It is a very tough question. As I said with our other entrepreneurs, there is no other way to learn than by doing. You can send them to business school, you can give them a book, or give them tutorials like my father did for me, but at the end of the day, unless they try, you don’t know.
My father gave me a lot of useful experience when I worked for him, but the relationship was as you would expect between a Greek Cypriot father and son: very competitive. So at the right time, he said: “OK, you go off on your own now.” Then he used to call me at night and say “I don’t agree with this,” and I would reply: “I’m my own boss now.” But he always kept an eye on me.
Do you ever do a ‘walk-around’ of a location, to pick up on the little things that don’t show up in data, to get a feel for what will and won’t work there?
First of all, I always believe in ‘walking the talk’. You can’t be selling things that you would not use yourself. So a typical trip for me would involve an easyBus ride, an easyJet flight and one stay in an easyHotel. If you try the product, you discover things the numbers won’t tell you. You also win more brownie points when you stand in the queue for an easyJet flight and behave like the average consumer. People almost assume by now that I have a private jet – which I don’t – so it makes customers feel better about using the airline.
The question of Cypriot identity is a complicated one, quite apart from the political aspects. A significant element in the mix is the Cypriot diaspora, who very often retain images of Cyprus in their minds which simply don’t reflect today’s reality. So, who do you think you are?
The problem is that I have created links with more than one country, so now I describe myself as a professional foreigner. In most people’s eyes, I come from somewhere else: to the mainland Greeks, I’m a Cypriot who lives in London; to the British, I’m Greek; to some Cypriots, I’m a kalamaras who’s never lived here.
But organising the business cooperation award here has undoubtedly given me an insight into the relationship between the south and north of the island. I don’t think I met a Turkish Cypriot person until the Award, except maybe in London or at a social occasion. Now, not only do we have two Turkish Cypriot colleagues with whom I’m in regular contact – if you like, they are my ‘interpreters’ of what is happening in the north – I also have all these entrepreneurs that I am getting to know now.
When you finally decide to retire from business, would you follow in Bill Gates’ philanthropic footsteps, and convert your wealth from easyGroup to ‘easyGive’?
I don’t think there is ever a single identifiable point when you say “I’ll stop working and start giving it all away.” I think it happens gradually. The reason I created the legal structure of the Stelios Philanthropic Foundation so early in my life and career is because I want the director and trustees to gain the experience to carry on what I’m doing when I’m no longer around. But that could be decades away. The thing I have discovered is that the pleasure of giving is actually when you are alive and healthy enough and doing well. What’s the point of being 95 and deaf and then trying to start awards? You won’t be able to interact with people, you won’t be able to stand up and give a speech. So I enjoy what I do, it’s at a level that is manageable. I’m not going to give it all away; I’m going to give a regular sum every year that I can afford to give away.
SIDEBAR
The Stelios Award for Business Co-operation in Cyprus started last year and will run until 2012.
The Award promotes islandwide, bi-communal business co-operation between entrepreneurs in Cyprus by giving promising ventures the funding boost they need to grow. It is funded personally by Haji-Ioannou through the Stelios Philanthropic Foundation.
Entrants must comprise at least one Greek Cypriot and one Turkish Cypriot who work together in a business venture. Not-for-profit endeavours can also apply, provided their activities are conducted in a business-like manner.
Finalists and winners will be chosen personally by Haji-Ioannou, who will present a personal cheque of €50,000 to up to five winning teams in late 2010.
- For more information, visit www.stelios.com/cyprus-business-cooperation
