I'm not keen on Open Coffee London new location Wednesday, June 06, 2007
For whatever reason, the new venue for Open Coffee London just doesn't seem to have the same buzz. It may just be acoustics or the layout, but whenever you approached the old venue at Starbucks in Esprit there was "noise" and the sense of something happening.
Sadly the new venue's coffee isn't up to much and the free wifi hasn't materialised either. I know we can't go back to Esprit, but maybe we should look around again.
Labels: opencoffee
posted by John Wilson @ 9:29 AM Permanent Link
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"OpenParty" is great fun Tuesday, May 01, 2007
Robert Loch, who is the founder of the Internet People networking event, last night launched his weekly free meetup at his London Penthouse flat in Chinatown.
It's Open Coffee but with BYO booze and hot tubs! The name is my invention rather than Robert's.
I hadn't realised that it was actually the venue of the party that feature in the Channel 4 news item on Open Coffee. Fantastic flat, right off Leicester Square, with a roof terrace.
It's invitation only, but an excellent event for sure. From a networking point of view its much less "speed dating" style than OpenCoffee and people were more focussed on socialising than doing pitches. Nonetheless, you do meet lots of interesting folks and not one laptop in sight nor suggestion of someone doing a demo.
Well done Robert.
Labels: opencoffee
posted by John Wilson @ 9:36 AM Permanent Link
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Open Coffee - gonna make you a star Thursday, April 26, 2007
The week I go away on hols, the TV crews roll up at Open Coffee in London to report on the success of the internet albeit under the headline "Dot Com Boom or Bust".
Channel 4 News carried a report which you can see here which included a brief interview with Saul Klein who founded Open Coffee, which has now spread to 22 other cities worldwide.
Included in the report was the CEO of Moveme.com who claimed that after attending "one of these" events on the Thursday he had received £1m in funding by the Monday. As it happens, they got their funding from Robin Klein (Saul's Dad) and others sometime before Open Coffee launched, so a distortion of the truth somewhat. However, today is the first Open Coffee since the TV report went out, so I rather suspect that the attendance numbers are going to be considerably up on usual (which is 100+) with claims like that having been reported.
Could be scary to be an investor today!
Other amusing thing is that the event has become so well attended that the Esprit store in which Starbucks is located, has asked that the event be moved elsewhere following complaints from their customers. Seems that the footfall resulting from the event actually wasn't buying anything from the store!
Labels: opencoffee, VC, VC startup
posted by John Wilson @ 9:06 AM Permanent Link
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OpenCoffee - An excellent blend Friday, March 02, 2007
I spent this morning at the inaugural OpenCoffee event which Saul Klein had organised. Designed to be an opportunity for "money" to meet "talent", over 100 people turned up, albeit not many of those were fellow investors.
The Starbucks venue is located inside the Esprit store on Regent St., which doesn't open until 10am, which was the start time for OpenCoffee. The staff clearly had a big shock therefore to see a large crowd gathering outside the store before it opened and an even bigger one to see them all wander directly past them upstairs to Starbucks. I reckon the security guards thought they had a flash mob on their hands!
Whilst there were a few familiar faces, the event attracted many faces I'd not seen before despite my regular attendance at many of the London web scene events. I listened to some great ideas/ventures and shall certainly be following up on several of these. Obviously not all of the businesses I spoke to suited our interests, but as I've reported before the "funding" dating game is about right price and right investor.
The event is scheduled to be held every Thursday at 10am-12pm, albeit when I left at 1pm it was still going strong. I hope that there will be sufficient interest to maintain this frequency as it would be a great shame if the event petered out from insufficient churn of new faces and too few attendees.
My tips for entrepreneurs thinking of attending are
- don't plan to do demos. For a start, there's no free wifi in this Starbucks, but more importantly this is about making initial contact with the "money".
- be prepared to give a short explanation of what you do and what you are looking for
- find out what the investor is looking for - they may not invest in your space or have min investment thresholds that may rule you out.
- acknowledge that other entrepreneurs have come along to speak to investors too, so if there's interest on both sides after say 5 minutes, then get agreement to a follow up and then move onto the other investors. If they aren't interested, it's not necessarily because your idea is lousy or they are "thick" and don't get it. It may be because your venture doesn't fit their investment profile - most times, they will explain this.
- regularly check that the investor understands what you are describing as you are talking
- have a good supply of business cards with you - lots of people ran out today!
- be approachable and initiate conversations with people hovering nearby as well as encouraging people to join your group/discussion
- circulate; it's why you are there and so is everyone else
- you are not in competition for investor money; if the venture is good enough and the price is right you should get funding regardless.
Details of OpenCoffee "members" and future events can be found here.
More coverage of OpenCoffee can be found here at Vecosys and here at the Guardian.
Labels: event, london, opencoffee, VC, VC startup
posted by John Wilson @ 12:31 AM Permanent Link
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