Lastminute.com: Brent Hoberman

Although he initially said he would stay on for three years as chief executive, Hoberman’s role became that of part-time chairman and chief strategy offi cer last April, with chief operating offi ce Ian McCaig taking over as chief executive.

“My job was done and Ian was in a position to take over,” he says of the change of heart. “He had worked with me for three years and was more comfortable with big operating structures.”

Hoberman says he did not like working for a subsidiary and you sense that he missed the entrepreneurial spirit of the early days of the business.

One way of getting this thrill vicariously is through angel investing, and he has stakes in a number of businesses, including ticket exchange Viagogo and home moving site Moveme. Yet he has so far steered clear of playing entrepreneurial guru on TV shows such as Dragons’ Den. “To make good TV of that sort you have to be negative. I want to be supportive and encouraging to entrepreneurs.”

Which is exactly what he is doing with his latest venture WAYN. Short for Where Are You Now, the website is a social networking play that brings together travellers, allowing them to post details of their trips, pictures, tips and contact fellow travellers through email and SMS. Hoberman joined the board of the venture as chairman after investing as an angel along with Esprit Capital Partners and a host of other dot com big players, such as Cheapflights’ David Soskin and Hugo Burge, and Adrian Critchlow and Andy Phillipps of online reservations business Active Hotels, which was sold to Priceline.com for £82m in 2004. In total, the high-profi le consortium is in for a total investment of £5.6m.

“They knew of me and I knew of them and they were looking for a chairman,” he explains. “I was impressed by what they had already done in building the membership to multiple millions, and they are profi table now.”

Hoberman claims the WAYN team is not overawed by the presence of so many dot com successes in the investment team. “We bring a range of skills,” he says. “It’s been a smart thing for them to do, but it depends on how they use the angels. We’re there to keep them enthusiastic and excited about the business.”

WAYN has seen huge growth in the past 18 months, booming from 45,000 members in March 2005 to seven million now, a figure that is increasing by 35,000 a day in 220 countries. The main aim is to maintain the growth rate of the company which makes money through advertising and subscriptions. “The key factor is to further emphasise the travel tips side of things and allow people to share tips with each other,” says Hoberman.

One area where he thinks he can add value is in developing the brand. “It has huge usage and is a big company, but has little awareness,” he says. “We need to work on that.”

Competition comes from travel sites, such as Trip Advisor, but WAYN is also up against dating sites which perform a similar role in bringing people together. Social networking, though, is all the rage in the Web 2.0 sphere. In the UK, networks already have in excess of 20 million members, with 160 million subscribing to the likes of MySpace, Friendster and Bebo globally. eMarketers research estimates advertising on such sites will top £0.9bn by 2010. But Hoberman doesn’t think WAYN will necessarily follow the same evolutionary path as Lastminute in raising fi nance and ultimately fl oating.

“The cost structure is lighter,” he says. “The most important thing is keeping up the momentum and keep it profi table, and the way to do that is to keep people using the site for a broad range of needs.”

THE NEXT BIG THING?

But WAYN is just one diversion post-Lastminute. Hoberman’s next venture will be back in the world of start-ups. He refuses to elaborate, but the project should be unveiled in the next couple of months.

Unlike Lastminute’s own chairman Allan Leighton, he doesn’t see himself “going plural”. “All of my engagements are synergistic so they work well,” he says. “The Guardian Media Group calls on me to think about the future of newspapers and media in the internet age, and the fact that I am engaged with other interests feeds back into that.”

After Lastminute, he says he was getting an offer a day, but is choosy about his directorships. “It has to be people that I’m interested in working with and an opportunity where I feel I can add value as well. I’ve turned down things that were not fast growth or were not being faced with technology disruption.”

Unlike his erstwhile colleague Martha Lane-Fox, he has not been tempted from the technology path. He has been to her Lucky Voice karaoke bar, but professes he doesn’t sing.

Inspiration comes from working with people who are passionate. “At the beginning of most companies, you are a small and passionate team and that is a very rewarding. You can break the business rules and think of ways of doing things differently. I love start-ups – there is nothing more rewarding than turning something that is purely paper into reality.”

So what’s next for Mr Lastminute? Well right now he’s off to lunch, but knowing Brent Hoberman, you suspect there’s more to it than that.