Every week in the heart of Bloomsbury, London, entrepreneurs, investors, techies and other like minded people meet up at a café in the UCL University campus and brainstorm. Most of them have never met before. Some are looking for feedback on their ideas, some are looking for potential business partners or co-founders and some are doing market research. Everyone is trying to make new connections.
They’ve shown up for Open Coffee.
Open Coffee was started in early 2007 by Saul Klein of renowned VC firm Index Ventures. After being covered by Channel 4 News it exploded. Every week dozens of people would show up, looking to fund their startup, invest in a startup or find an already funded startup to work for.
What’s remarkable isn’t the above sequence of events. What’s remarkable is that Open Coffee became self-sustainable. In 2007 every other person would ask you: “Where’s Saul Klein? My startup is the next MySql!” Today, people ask: “What are you up to? How can we help each other?”
I haven’t been to a single Open Coffee event yet that hasn’t resulted in new, useful connections. Today was no different. I met people from startups such as vouchAR, a technologist from the Technology Strategy Board and many others. Walking out into the sunshine and heading for the Farmer’s Market, which is right next to the Open Coffee venue, I decided I would have to incorporate going to Open Coffee into my routine. After running every week for four years – it still really is that useful.