Meet The Youngest Man To Visit Every Country In The World And Founder Of Holiday Swap, A Founder’s Story with James Asquith
James Asquith remarkably completed visiting all 196 UN-recognized countries by the time he was just 24. An even more remarkable was he started this epic and ultimate road trip when he was just 18. Recently we had a chance to ask him a few questions about his time on the road (he no longer has a permanent home) and he recently built and launched an app that has introduced an extremely affordable way for travelers to see the world. The service is called Holiday Swap, and currently allows one to swap space
Tell us about your childhood and where you grew up
My family doesn’t really come from anything. They are amazing, and hard-working, they gave me and my sister and everything we could have wanted – but we never really had any money growing up. At 12, I started washing cars up and down my street, a fiver [£5] a go. That was the first time someone tried to hustle me, actually – they offered me a Creme Egg in payment, and I was like no, you pay £5. I tried to give my mum the money I’d earned: £120. She refused and instead opened up a bank account for me. I became obsessed with seeing that number next to your name, and from then on, I did any odd job I could. By the time I was fifteen, I had three different jobs on the go. One of them was blowing up balloons in a shop for about £4 an hour. But everything I earned I saved. At 17 I set up an events business, which was really good money, and when I was 18 the ambition was to buy a house with what I’d accumulated. I went into finance because I wanted to trade shares, and I invested all of my money into stocks in the middle of the financial crisis in 2008. It came off – I made a good amount of money from it, but then I lost a lot of money, which was a great lesson for me. After facing the loss, I had a little bit left and thought: instead of using this to buy a house, I’m going to use it to see the world. My trip was totally self-made. I never took any sponsorship – I wanted to show people that it is possible to do it yourself.
How did you get started as an entrepreneur?
After traveling to every country and picking up a Guinness World Record in the process, I realized there were so many people looking for a way to travel further and more affordably. So that’s when, in 2017, we started Holiday Swap. Since then we’ve grown to 185 countries offering users more and more options every single day as we continue to expand. Now we are the largest home exchange platform (by users) allowing a peer-to-peer marketplace where people can save on the cost of accommodation and swap their homes almost anywhere in the world. Holiday Swap allows people to travel to places they didn’t think possible and save money in the process which gives them more to spend on the experiences they love. Since the pandemic, we’ve seen a shift in people wanting to do staycations, regional and domestic travel, and beyond, but most importantly we’ve seen people want to save money and stay somewhere safe and enjoyable, like a home in the countryside. The next 12 months will be a very exciting time as we aim to offer millions more homes around the world. We are so glad you’ve joined our growing community and can’t wait to get you traveling again! Happy swapping!
What is one business lesson you would tell a startup founder?
It does not matter how good a platform is, if there are only two people there, no one will go on it. And so, there was a lot of work to get to that point where the app was relevant and was a large enough platform for people to go on it and utilize it.
