Jul 30, 2026 – 5.00amIn 2007, three Frenchmen opened a bar. They had just graduated from elite universities including Paris Dauphine, Milan’s Bocconi and the John Molson School of Business in Montreal. Their qualifications – aside from mixing drinks with precision-cut ice cubes – included economics, finance and management. And from that one bar they have built, in less than 20 years, one of France’s buzziest accommodation chains, Experimental Group, with 17 hotels across Europe and North America and plans to open up to 23 more in the next five years, including in Australia.“We paid ourselves the minimum wage, and we literally reinvested everything into the business,” says co-founder Romée de Goriainoff of Experimental’s early days. In their first year with that one bar, in Paris’s Sentier district, they made €1 million in revenue and a profit of €350,000. That gave them enough to buy their second bar two years later with cash. By 2010, they had expanded overseas, with a bar in London’s Soho. By 2015, they had their first hotel – the 37-room Grand Pigalle in Paris’ trendy 9th arrondissement.Subscribe to gift this articleGift 5 articles to anyone you choose each month when you subscribe.Subscribe nowAlready a subscriber? Matthew DrummondAFR Magazine editorMatthew Drummond edits AFR Magazine, our premium monthly inserted magazine that covers business, politics, fashion, design, food and wine, and is home to the Rich List, Young Rich List and the Power lists.Fetching latest articles