I decided very early on that the way to make a difference in my life and in other people's lives was to give them services and products that are actually for the many and not for the few.

On reflection, I am always pleasantly surprised when ordinary members of the public stop me in the street to say, 'Thank you,' I guess for making travel and other goods and services affordable to them.

In simple terms, I realised that food is the most fundamental need for a person. In difficult economic times, people's priorities change, and they might be willing to do something that secures for them the lowest possible weekly food bill.

There is a place and a time for philanthropy, and there is only so much money you can give away.

I see easyHotel as one of the best, most natural extensions of the 'easy' brand from the airline. EasyHotel is raising money to accelerate growth at a much faster rate than I could have grown it as a private company, whilst enabling me to spend more time on my diversified portfolio of other investments.

My biggest mistake was when I started up easyEverything, a chain of Internet cafes. The idea that people would go to a shop to use a computer was revolutionary in 1999. It worked for a while, but cheap technology almost killed it. One silver lining of the problems I faced was that it gave me experience of turnarounds.