Making it Real

One of the elements of the Tuttle Club vision is to create a permanent social space for us to hang out in (preferably with all the other bits joined on).

What would actually happen there?

How would it work?

How is this sustainable?

Where should it be?

Does it make money for the Club or vice-versa?

Who needs to be involved?

Pippa: I'd love to see us create a bricks and mortar 'third space' where work and leisure meet - a kind of Starbucks meets Regus Serviced Offices only heaps more imaginative and owned by us and perhaps the users. For me the whole point would be to make money, not zillions, but a steady income for people who invest their time and creativity in making the concept work. If the recession bites and we're forced to find more innovative ways to earn a living (not to mention fund our pensions) being commercial is not a crime, it's an opportunity, perhaps even a necessity. I'm not totally against corporations either as they have expertise, infrastructure and funding they can lend us. Of course they'd want a return on their investment, but if 'shared ownership' was one way of getting this off the ground I'd consider it.

How would we do it? The ownership structure and reward system would certainly be complex and you'd need some serious brains to model it. That's assuming we can get an investor to come up with the millions to open a cafe/social/workspace in central London (I can't think of another way to get the money we'd need at this stage). The first step is surely to create a collective vision. What sort of place do we want? How can we make it a viable proposition? What sort of business models would work? How could we test them? You'd have to involve some number crunchers in this process. Having creative ideas is brilliant, but you need someone with the investment nous to keep things grounded and to make sure you're channelling your energy in the right financial directions.

Co-creating on such a large scale would be hard work but it could be rewarding in more ways than one. And if the aim of the cafe/social space is to empower people to launch or grow their businesses using social media, that would be a worthy ambition.

RebeccaCaroe: There is a bit of a long shot opportunity with a client of mine who is a property developer. She is trying to buy a building near Waterloo for a client who wants to use it to run training courses. They would like to have a cafe on the ground floor and need to have a relationship with someone / some organisation who can run it for them.

Opportunity - get a venue for a low rent (or none?).... use the rooms when they aren't training..... have a real cafe and a permanent home

Hurdles to overcome - finding someone to staff and run the cafe and setting up the rooms for training

update looking like this deal won't happen because a planning change of use is needed....sorry.

Sizemore: I am friends with the founder of the Coffee@ chain. I can sound him out for advice and perhaps more if that would be any help.

Mike Oh: I own a US company based that has a prime retail space in Boston which has been an Internet Cafe for years: Tech Superpowers. Obviously, that's not a solution to the space conundrum for London, but we're looking to do something similar to Tuttle to turn it from an old busted business model into the new hotness. So bottom line: we have a corporate-funded "sandbox" that can be used to test Tuttle ideas without having to put £millions or £thousands on the line - and we love to experiment with stuff. (We sell Macs and do IT consulting as our primary business, so our retail space doesn't have to be fully commercially viable)