November 14, 2023

Should you start a business with a close friend?

1 hour 1 minute

This episode, we talk to the founders of The Black Hole Group; a collective of lifestyle and F&B concepts.

They started out in 2012 with a backpacker's hostel, and now they own about 13 F&B and lifestyle concepts and are still going strong.

More importantly, they are friends who started a business together, and we are super excited to talk to them because The Woke Salaryman was also started by two friends who met in school. They met in JC; while we met in Poly, so we have so many things to ask.

We will ask them about what it's like starting a business with a close friend, how to maintain or balance being friends and business partners, and their journey from plucky 26-year-olds running around putting our fires in a backpackers hostel to essentially, F & B moguls.

0:00 Intro

1:16 Why are they called The Black Hole Group

10:05 Starting a hostel in their 20s

15:17 The margins of running a hostel

21:08 Scaling the business

24:02 Do you hang out as friends now?

28:58 Working together as friends/cofounders

37:15 Growing a business = compounding learning

41:00 COVID as a wake-up call

48:20 Co-founders with different lifestyles

54:21 Would you recommend starting a business with a close friend

...more