Learning Lessons from: James Caan

Last night, the Keynes Society at Eton College presented yet another prestigious speaker in the shape of James Caan, the youngest Dragon on Dragon’s Den. He is the founder of Alexander Mann, Humana, and now the CEO of Hamilton Bradshaw, a private equity firm. The title of his talk was “Observe the masses and do the opposite”.

He explained to us how important it was to be unique in your ideas and to break through the conventional wisdom. “I tend to assume that the masses are wrong,” he proudly announced. “And don’t be frightened of discussing your ideas with others – if it’s that easily copied, then it’s not worth it. Instead, share it with everyone to receive better feedback.”

It was fascinating to compare James next to Stelios (who spoke on Tuesday here), both of whom very deserved of their “serial entrepreneur” label. Though they are both incredibly successful businessmen in their own respective fields, they have very different approaches when it comes to doing business. Whilst Stelios focused on ideas about niche markets, James drew from his own experience as a headhunter and looked for the right people.

“Business is about people,” he declared, “95% of the execution of an idea is finding the right people.” He then recounted his war stories from when Alexander Mann was just starting up. He was humble in admitting that running a company successfully means that you have accept hiring people better than yourself. He managed to attract some star executives by offering them equity stakes in his business, further incentivising them to work harder. He told us about companies that were successes because the CEOs simply walked around the shop floor, talking to employees and customers, listening to what they had to say. This he dubbed “intrepreneurship”, a good way of avoiding managerial diseconomies of scale by keeping the company responsive to consumer demands and less tied up with red tape.

He then told us about Laban Roomes’ Goldgenie company which turned out to be a stellar success. He explained that here was an idea that was admittedly mediocre – gold-plating is an industry that is very easy to enter, hardly unique with few barriers to entry. Yet the reason why James supported him was because he saw something special in Laban and rushed to invest in that human capital.

James’ five tips to make it big in the business world:

1. Don’t focus on the product, focus on the people.
2. Be ready to hire people better than yourself.
3. Know your strengths and natural assets – know yourself.
4. Be individual in your ideas.
5. Observe the masses and do the opposite.

[Editor’s note: this is the second of a new series called Learning Lessons, detailing the author’s exploits on the London lecture circuit. For further information or to subscribe to the mailing list, contact ]

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