Meet Entrepreneur Jules Kwan
Meet Singapore-based Jules Kwan – yogi, entrepreneur and new-age businessman. He is the co-founder of alternative media and social media business, the Mailman Group. And also URBN hotels and Resorts, Kollective Hotels and Resorts, the Space Group – a real estate investment and development business. In March, he launched www.ifunding.co, the first global real estate crowdfunding platform of its kind.
Somehow we got him to sit still long enough to answer a few questions.
Hi Jules, thanks for being our first Man about Town!
OK we admit, we’re quietly intimidated by your everyday dapperness (subject sighted in waistcoat at office last week!) What gets you up and out of the house looking like that every morning?
(Laughs) You must have seen me on a good day!
Let us attempt to describe the teenaged Jules and you tell us how accurate we are…
Determined and focused, you had your eye on the prize from an early age: Not really, I actually just wanted to be a ski bum and went to Whistler Canada to start teaching but gave it up after my first hour!
Curious, creative, enterprising, liked pushing the boundaries: Yes, that much is true.
Confident but a bit shy with girls: I grew up with 3 sisters so not sure if shy is the right word.
Born in Sydney but Singapore is home now. What’s great about living here?
Its position in Southeast Asia – making it perfect as a travel and business hub. I think you have to travel and do business in multiple places as this gives you perspective and relativity. Singapore is the yin of the rest of Southeast Asia’s yang.
I especially like the food. I think it’s an effective transport hub of SE Asia, I like its efficiency, cleanliness, rules (they are not too bad when you operate in many countries that don’t seem to have any), but mostly the multi cultural milkshake crowd is really interesting to me.
You love doing deals and making new stuff happen. Tell us a bit more about crowdfunding.
Crowdfunding is exploding around the globe, it is helping start businesses and projects in culture, art, music, businesses of all kinds, real estate deals, you name it and it’s probably happening. Since the beginning of time when anybody had an idea that needed funding, they usually pooled money together from friends, family and others. Today’s version of this can be called crowdfunding and it is happening on a massive scale because of the internet. It is disrupting and breaking down barriers that have existed for so long and democratising the fund raising process and allowing anyone (literally) to be a part of an interesting project, a start up business or in our case, a real estate deal, with small amounts of funds. I think it is simply awesome.
You live in Singapore but also call China, Sri Lanka, Australia and the US home. That sounds like international citizenship to us. What keeps your feet in so many camps?
I have a hotel management company business in China, a real estate development company in Sri Lanka, I was born in Sydney, and my lady is from L.A.
What part of being an Aussie do you keep close to your heart (apart from vegemite) and is helpful in Asia?
Hmmm, Australia has changed a lot since I left 16 years ago. I hope to be always traveling and exploring the planet and I think that’s a very Australian thing to do, we seem to be everywhere.
Where do you go on weekends in Singapore and what do you like to do?
I love to travel, eat good food, hang out with friends and family. I go out to Duxton Hill, Club Street, house/dinner parties, dim sum at Super Duck in The Paragon.
It’s good to throw in the occasional music festival where you don’t sleep for a few days! And for a quick getaway, the coconuts and sunsets in Sri Lanka are hard to beat.
Do you know anything we don’t know (any of Singapore’s best kept secrets)?
Macpherson road, ming kee, and crab noodles kill all the other tourist traps out there.
Describe Singapore’s “Woman about Town?”
That would be one of those mixed bags of lollies.
One parting question I’m sure we all want to know. What’s on your vision board right now?
25,000,000, 1/1/2016, a ridiculous looking villa we are designing, and a jet.
Thanks Jules!
Thanks Rohan Rees for the photography!
And thanks to our mates at Oxwell & Co for inviting us in to shoot in their super cool private dining room and secret cigar lounge.