Soho House Founder: How I Built The World’s Most Exclusive Club: Nick Jones | E163

Jones describes being “branded thick” at school, but later realizing dyslexia forced him to simplify everything. He insists on one-page summaries, trims complexity, and edits relentlessly across design, operations, and tech. This simplification makes ideas clearer for teams and customers, and he encourages anyone diagnosed with dyslexia to see it as “a huge opportunity,” not a stigma.

Starting in an 1980s hotel kitchen, he endured abuse, long hours, and menial work, but credits it with pulling him out of shyness and teaching him to relate to people from all backgrounds. He argues a year in hospitality should be like national service because it teaches teamwork, humility, practical life skills, and how to stay organized under pressure—skills he rates above a master’s degree.

His first restaurant, Over The Top, was badly designed, poorly executed, and nearly empty. Instead of seeing it as fatal, he used it to learn cash management, staff payment under stress, and the impossibility of marketing your way out of a bad product. Those lessons directly fed into Café Boheme’s success and his long-term view that “if you don’t make mistakes, you’re not pushing yourself.”

Jones is explicit that members, not strategy decks, drove expansion: a member telling him everyone was in Cannes inspired the first pop-up on a boat; repeated requests led him to open Babington House in the country and later New York. He emphasizes that members are smart, can’t be fooled, and that the best “marketing” is simply making the experience so good that word of mouth does the rest.

Unable to raise more family or bank cash, he took the space above Café Boheme by getting landlord Paul Raymond to finance the fit-out and roll it into a higher rent. Babington House was crowdfunded informally via many members investing £5,000 each. Soho House New York’s funding came from tireless show-rounds and a “hard hat dinner” on a building site that attracted investors including David Bowie.