Currently were based in SOUTHAMPTON of all places.. but it is where I and my partner studied so it was easy to find some office space above an Internet cafe for 2000 pounds a quarter including all bills.

However its not great facilities and not a good working enviroment for our needy developers! So were looking to move into London in the next 6 months once we find suitable space both for office and living.

If anyone has any more advice i would really appriciate it! You can contact me at sam *a*t* ugame.net, we will need around 8 desks.

P.s. I’m going to start checking out Techcrunch UK more.. to used to just reading the main TC site.. loving advice not just about Silicon Valley!

There seems to be an awful lot of reasonably priced office space in London – as long as you’re willing to travel for it. Shoreditch, Hackney, Hammersmith and pretty much anywhere south of the river have plenty of space that’s affordable – particularly if you find renovated warehouse space, or creative hubs. What you won’t find, for the most part, is anything cheap and central.

Now even though we (crowdstorm) are virtual as Mike mentions (in fact I am writing this from the lounge at Stanford business school!), I really think we would be more productive in an office with flipchart, desks, and other similar startups. Thing is that serviced offices are expensive, other offices often want long term leases and are expensive, and subletting other startup desks would be good if you could easily find any.

So, my question is this. Is this a real problem for people and if so, what do we do about it?

What I then decided to do – in an effort to offset some of my costs – was to go large, and take over 15,000 square feet of an old clothing factory, again in Bow, and set to work subdividing it into very cheap small units for mostly creative and startup companies.

My initial idea was to complement the offices with some sort of classic Bay Area-style co-working or deskspace setup, but demand for this was muted. What’s been far more popular have been self-contained spaces from about 100 square feet, as i guess people value privacy and security. From my own perspective, homeworking has far too many distractions and the discipline of actually coming out to work is really valuable.

I’m also about to take over another 5,000 square feet of warehouse space next door, so I’d be very interested to hear what the startup community actually needs, before I actually start building walls. If anyone needs cheap space, please mail me – storey7*at*gmail.com

I’d recommend it : )

If anyone knows of any spare desks or cheapish offices in the mid/west Kent area then I’d be grateful to hear from you.

http://www.workspacegroup.co.uk/london-commercial-property/offices/south-east-london/southbank-house/

If you run a start-up, you are probably a director and so you qualify for IoD membership. Yes it is a bit more stuffy but hell I’m 43 years old now so I don’t need to work in a skateboard park. When I want to do social stuff or occasionally work more quietly I use Adam Street.

Evan

As you know we located SubHub in Cardiff exactly for this reason. It’s two hours from Paddington by train so it’s accessible to London whenever someone from our team needs to be there. It’s also close to Bristol where there is plenty of digital media activity. And Cardiff Bay, where we are located, is very nice especially in summer. I like to joke that I have a Bay Area internet start-up even if it is a different bay!

In Cardiff we benefit not only from reduced costs but also from subsidies provided by the Welsh Assembly. Salaries are lower than in London and loyalty is probably greater as there are fewer start-ups in our space competing for talent. We are in the @Wales Digital Media Incubator which is a subsidised facility where we pay £60/person/month, and they also provide computers. We have job creation and other grants worth around £300,000 which are free cash and non-repayable as long as we hit certain targets.

Because of all this we have been able to bootstrap our start-up much more efficiently than if we had been in London. This has been really helpful given the blind alleys one can often go down in building a company and finding the right message and model. Without a doubt we would have had to take external investment sooner to fund that whole process if we had remained in London. Now we have a launched product, an experienced team and a growing customer base, which is much more appealing to the potential investors we are currently engaged with.

Cheers,
Evan

@Keld – your space does rock…

To be honest, as my team is all virtual to me, Skype, Jabber, and Google Docs is all I need to keep things plugging along. Have to admit, must check out One Alfred Place. Looks really swish.

I guess eventually we will have to get some office space somewhere…

@Daryl – I agree with you about Croydon good transport links, shame about it’s image

I’m like Oli – a mix of home desk borrowing and anywhere with a wifi connection.

Personally, I have found the combination of working from these sorts of clubs, working from home for half a day a week, and some reasonable, flexible sub-letted office space to be the perfect combination. For the latter, it’s often a case of finding a like-minded entrepreneur who will sub-let a room or section of desks, with a view to growing from there.

For longer term solutions, I have used and been pleased with both Instant Offices (www.instant-offices.com) and Devono (www.devono.com) and can personally recommend both. Hope that helps.