Defining moments interview series: Robin Klein

For Klein, a real defining moment was deciding to leave South Africa and come to the UK in 1976 to run electrical appliance company Salton. “It was difficult to feel entirely free and comfortable in apartheid South Africa,” he says. “When our first child was born, it really came home to me that this wasn’t a place I wanted our children to grow up in. I really couldn’t see a solution to the problems as they were then, and decided that, while we were young enough, we should leave to make a go of something else, elsewhere.”

Back in 1994, Robin’s son, Saul, who had moved to the US, enthused about this new technology known as “the World Wide Web”. Innovations was the catalogue in the Sunday papers at the time. “I decided that if we could put the catalogue online, rather than printing and mailing millions of copies, we could revolutionise the business,” says Klein. At the time, to access the internet, one had to use a dial-up modem at around 56 kilobytes per second.

Klein sold Innovations in 1997 for £45m, and remained with Burtons as Director of Home Shopping. Though he says he’s an entrepreneur at his core, he is also proud of his agility. “I adapted pretty well to being in a larger corporation, and had two or three fantastic years. You can read books about all this stuff but you never truly learn something unless you experience it. However, I have always wanted to do my own thing.”

Klein also likes change “as long as it’s moving forwards. I am a very curious person and I always want to learn something I don’t know”. He laughs: “My wife tells me that if I hadn’t changed all these businesses I might have changed my wife, so she’s very pleased that I found another outlet for that…”

Investors should back people, says Klein. “I look for determination. This is fundamental. It’s really not easy to build a company; purpose and determination to see it through are essential.” He also looks for people who have done a lot with a little and (“I could talk about this forever”) an awareness of what they don’t know. “Most of the people I back are super, super smart. But knowing what you don’t know, and having the curiosity to find out, and taking on board opinions and advice are very important attributes for a successful entrepreneur.”

These days Klein is focusing his time on his existing portfolio, and helping Saul run their investment company, LocalGlobe. “I’m the chairman, or the Chief Financial Officer, depending on what day it is.” He still gets excited about watching companies grow. “I’m a firm believer that no company that’s going to endure can be built in less than 10 years and, because we’ve been investing as long as we have, a lot of those companies are now coming to fruition, and this is very exciting.”

One such success is Wise (formerly known as TransferWise), which listed on the stock exchange in June at a market value of £8bn. “We’ve been investing in TransferWise from its very earliest days,” Klein says, “and it’s fantastic to see not only how it’s grown into a global business, but also how the individuals have grown within it.”

Though the England that Klein came to in the 1970s is very different now, he says he’s excited about the future here. “The UK is in a fantastic position,” he says. “We’ve got great universities, we’ve got great science and we’ve got capital. We’ve got a government that recognises that technology has a major role to play in the new economy, and I’m very optimistic – particularly because technology is moving to the areas that really will make a difference to society.”

First published on the FT.com and produced in partnership with the Financial Times Commercial department.