What were you doing at university? For many of us, the answer would be a lot of partying and not a lot of work. But Jake Murray spent his university time furiously planning the creation of his own business, even leaving his course a year early to launch it.
Alongside his former business partner (and fellow student) Laurence Malyon, Mr Murray started the serviced accommodation firm Donnini Apartments back in 2017, having noticed a gap in the market within the Ayrshire tourism sector.
“I’m Ayrshire born and bred,” he explains, “and I know Ayrshire has a lot of potential. We’ve got the airport, we’ve got the Rabbie Burns heritage, some nice seaside towns – but it was quite untapped. Airbnb was taking off at this point but nobody in Ayrshire was providing the guest experience service that we were. We thought that, if we could combine good guest experiences with high-quality property, then we could be in with a real chance.”
Their business model was undoubtedly solid but as two fresh-faced students, did they struggle to get taken seriously?
“We had the enthusiasm, the passion. We didn’t have much experience but we thought that, if we could learn from other people, then we could make a success of it,” he says. “But we had nothing to lose really, because we were students at the time, and we had no income anyway. We just thought, why not?
“We were never fazed by our ages. We didn’t ever feel like we couldn’t go and have a meeting with someone, because of the age that we were.”
However, Mr Murray admits that they were “patronised quite a lot” when they first started out.
“But once we started talking about what we knew, the respect came after that,” he explains.
“In fact, we could use our age to our advantage. When you are younger, people are more willing to give you help, give you more leeway than they would if it was someone of a similar age coming to ask them for help.”
This early self-assuredness clearly served him well. In the seven years since, Mr Murray has grown Donnini’s portfolio to 58 properties, even buying his first hotel earlier this year (The Kylestrome in Ayr). At the start of 2024, he also bought out his business partner, to assume control of Donnini Apartments.
It was an “amicable split”, he explains, borne out of the fact that the two no longer shared the same vision for the future direction of the company. But having singular responsibility for his own business at just 28 years old comes with inevitable pressure – so Mr Murray has benefited hugely from the support of Entrepreneurial Scotland.
“It’s been brilliant. It gives you an opportunity to speak to the people who are on your cohort and go into some level of depth into what challenges you’re facing and how to potentially solve them.”
A recent challenge was dealing with the Scottish Government’s new regulation around short-term let licensing.
“That’s taken up the last year of my life, just making sure that we have licences for all the properties. It has made it a little bit more challenging to grow, as we can’t take properties on as fast as we used to.
“We now need to go through all the regulatory red tape to make sure that everything is as it should be.”
However, as well as the core business model of buying properties to rent out to guests (both tourists and business travellers), Donnini Apartments also offers rent agreement and property management services to existing landlords. It is this three-pronged approach, according to Mr Murray, that has helped the business grow so successfully.
He has a huge affection for Ayrshire – the company is named after the first property he ever listed, in Donnini Court in Ayr – but hopes to expand throughout more of Scotland and eventually the UK.
If only everyone’s university experience was so productive.