Interview: Sir Stelios on how he launched easyJet - and backing young entrepreneurs

This is Money Podcast

This is Money

Business News, Business, Investing, News

4.1 • 650 Ratings

🗓️ 13 February 2024

⏱️ 15 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this special bonus This is Money podcast episode, Simon Lambert speaks to easyJet founder Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou.

Sir Stelios tells the story of how he launched easyJet his easyGroup of companies - and how allowing others to build companies using the easy brand works.

He also explains why he is backing entrepreneurs under the age of 35 with his Stelios Philanthropic Foundation awards and giving away £150,000 to the successful winner.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	I'm delighted to be joined on the This Is Money podcast by a genuine business legend, Sestellios Hajiuano.
0:09.8	Sestelios launched the Easy family of brands in 1994, most famously, of course, EasyJet.
0:16.6	He is now offering mentorships and £300,000 cash prizes with the top price for £150,000 to young entrepreneurs as part of his Young Entrepreneur Awards from the Stelios Philanthropic Foundation.
0:29.5	We'll find out a bit more about that shortly.
0:31.9	But first, a little bit about Sir Stelios and what makes him tick.
0:39.6	Sestellios, welcome to the This Is Money podcast.
0:44.6	It's a pleasure to be with you. We're going to get on to the Young Entrepreneur Awards in a bit,
0:49.4	but I think first it'd be really nice to talk through a little bit about your business and entrepreneurial history itself. So to wind the clock back all the way to before even EasyJet, how did you first
0:58.7	get started out as an entrepreneur? The first thing to remember about myself is that I come from
1:04.9	a Greek shipping family. So I've always been very clear that I'm not self-made and I love to my father.
1:11.6	My late father helped me finance my startup business dreams, if you like.
1:16.6	But nowadays, if you don't have a rich dad, you can always go out and raise capital from venture capitalists or private equity or whatever.
1:23.6	So there are ways of starting a business having finance from someone else. It was just in my case,
1:29.1	the finance came from my father. My first and only boss was my late father. So I worked for him after
1:35.0	university. I worked for him for three or four years. And then I think I had enough of working for him.
1:40.1	And I think the definition of an entrepreneur is someone who likes to work for themselves
1:45.6	and they like to be their own boss and they like to take business risk. So I said I'm going to
1:51.3	start my own business in Shipping first, which was the industry I was brought up in. And then my
1:57.3	first business was called Stellmar. You can see the use of the first letters, four letters
2:02.8	of my name. I was very egocentric. I wanted it to be Stelius, a shipping company, not his
2:08.3	fathers. And then I realized that in a B2B environment, like shipping, it's very difficult to build
2:15.1	a brand, a household name. I really wanted people to know my brand.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from This is Money, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of This is Money and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.