Starbucks Hosts OpenCoffee Club For Bristol Entrepreneurs And Start-Ups

06.05.2008 00:38:00

Hosted by Starbucks, OpenCoffee Club, the global networking phenomenon for entrepreneurs and start-ups, has arrived in Bristol.

Launched today by local digital media entrepreneur John Bradford, the club will meet fortnightly at the Bristol Park Street coffee house. Starbucks has long been seen as a ‘third place’ for the business community to hold meetings and work away from home and the office.

Bristol’s OpenCoffee Club offers entrepreneurs the opportunity to meet investors and business developers informally and find out how to grow their businesses. Areas of specific interest will be under discussion at each meeting which will include question and answer sessions with established figures from the business community.

The OpenCoffee Club concept was developed by Saul Klein, whose business ventures include Lovefilm and Skype, in order to encourage online entrepreneurs, developers and investors to organise off-line, real-world informal networking.

What Klein had identified was a need for entrepreneurs to meet regularly, to network not just with each other but also with business developers and investors, who are often inaccessible to many entrepreneurs. The key to the success of these networking events has been regular meetings in coffee houses; Klein’s idea was that it should be possible to go to cities all over the world and know at which places, and at what times, to meet other entrepreneurs.

Since that first meeting in the Regent Street Starbucks in March 2007, 81 OpenCoffee Clubs have been started across the world.

John Bradford said: “The idea to start an OpenCoffee Club here in Bristol developed from the work I did with the digital media agency, South West Screen, last summer and the subsequent ‘Access to Digital Media Finance’ event at the Watershed. There was a clear need for a new networking forum for digital media entrepreneurs, different from conventional networking organisations. The informal atmosphere of a Starbucks coffee house is the perfect environment for what I had in mind.

“OpenCoffee Club provides a series of morning networking events that lead to semi-structured evening dinners where entrepreneurs can mix with investors with a view to building relationships towards high growth.”

Rosie Giarratana, acting store manager, of the Park Street coffee house, said: “Starbucks is honoured to be hosting OpenCoffee Club here in Bristol and proud to be helping the city’s entrepreneurs by offering them the opportunity to meet up and discuss their ideas over a coffee.”

OpenCoffee Club will meet fortnightly on Tuesdays at 9am at the Park Street Starbucks coffee house. The next meeting is on Tuesday 20 May when the theme will be ‘Do you know your addressable market?’ All local entrepreneurs, business developers and investors are welcome to attend and details can be found at http://upcoming.yahoo.com/group/4416 

-ENDS-

For further information on Bristol OpenCoffee please contact John Bradford on 07739 705578 or at http://www.jbsh.co.uk/ or follow the twitter feed at http://twitter.com/opencoffeebr1

For further information on OpenCoffee Club please see http://opencoffee.ning.com/

Client name: Starbucks

Business type: Consumer

Web link: www.starbucks.co.uk.