Saul Klein started the OpenCoffee Club just about two years ago with an initial gathering in London. As I’ve mentioned before, Cambridge is one of the other hearts of entrepreneurial ventures in the UK and Europe. About 10% of venture capital across Europe is invested in Cambridge. (A city of just 80,000 people if you don’t include students.)
What Cambridge doesn’t have right now is a regular place to meet fellow entrepreneurs. While organisations like the Cambridge Network and the Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning and Judge Business School all run events with some excellent networking afterwards, there are no regular events.
The OpenCoffee Club in Cambridge is meant to help change this. As Saul described in his first post on the idea:
This is an attempt to establish recognized, open and regular meeting places where entrepreneurs can meet with investors (and anyone else who fancies coming along) in a totally informal setting.
The key is a regular place and a regular time — it’s not important who comes along, some days it might be no one — just that people know if they want to meet, this is the time and this is the place.
We want to create some density for people — a few places where people know they can meet or bump into others.
Think of OpenCoffee Cambridge as office hours for entrepreneurs and investors. It’s simply a regular, weekly time to get together to demonstrate what you’re working on, discuss current challenges, and pitch your ideas.
When and Where?
The first OpenCoffee Cambridge will be held this Thursday, February 19th from 10am-noon at Caffe Nero on King’s Parade. (Directly across from King’s College Chapel.) Click here to see the Upcoming invite.
This day/time is far from set in stone… if attendees (or people that want to but can’t) have strong feelings for or against it, please feel free to comment here or contact me directly. Or better yet, come along to talk about it!
I really look forward to the very first OpenCoffee Cambridge this Thursday, and hope you can come along. If you’d like to hear about future OpenCoffee Cambridge events, please join the group on Upcoming. (I hope to shift this and make it a Meetup Group soon.)
Jed Christiansen 