Born protected by silver training wheels meant William Louey Lai-kuen, the only grandson of the Kowloon Motor Bus founder, could afford to repeatedly fail in business.
Which he enthusiastically did. He crashed producing movies, lost in property investments and burned up HK$10 million on an Italian restaurant where the waiting staff sang arias while serving dinner. 'It was not too bad to lose that in five years, and it was a lot of fun,' he said. 'I got to design all the uniforms.'
But learning from his mistakes, the 47-year-old accountancy graduate has managed to succeed at the entrepreneurship game, investing six years ago in Hong Kong Construction (Technology). It used the funds to secure the exclusive local licence for Geofiber, a Japanese greening system used as a replacement for cement to protect the slopes from erosion - and finally, Mr Louey was the chairman of a flourishing enterprise.
His first venture - and first business mistake - was Tsim Sha Tsui's once celebrated Tartufo restaurant, which closed in 1993. Though busy when it first opened in 1989, it quickly drained cash - something Mr Louey blamed on a combination of 'an inconvenient location and spending too much on decoration, cutlery and expensive staff to sing opera'.
What he learned: 'One should never set up a business you don't know. And if you do start one, find a good partner who has the expertise. I had thought running a restaurant was easy. It looks like all you need to do is move in the tables and chairs and buy knives and forks.'
He also oversaw production of the finale of Tsui Hark's A Chinese Ghost Story trilogy, released by his family's film studio, Golden Princess. Later, he worked on property projects, including the Pioneer Centre in Mong Kok. However, both the film and property firms were sold in the mid-1990s 'because they didn't have very good results'.
Finally finding a good partner, Mr Louey invested HK$40 million in 2001 into the small private construction outfit founded 40 years earlier by Ko Chin-fung. Combining the deep pockets and contacts of Mr Louey with Mr Ko's background turned Geofiber into the firm's key income driver. Within two years, Mr Louey broke even on his investment. 'We have the products and right people and right strategy,' he said. Indeed, in hilly Hong Kong, slope protection is big business.