At what point does an ambitious entrepreneur realise their madcap business dream is unreachable and set it aside? For Vibushan Thirukumar and Paul Nelmes - who quit their corporate jobs in 2019 to build their first start-up dream, an eco hotel in Sri Lanka - it was two weeks into their location-scouting mission on the south Asian island.
“We had the address of a plot of land, and when we arrived, we were surprised to find it had a half-built house on it,” explains Thirukumar, who moved to London from Sri Lanka with his parents aged two, as refugees escaping civil war. “But no one was around, so I climbed over a gate to get into the house, where I found six intimidating guard dogs all staring at me and chased me off the land. It was the wrong address.”
