Hello, I’m Ben.
I’m in the process of moving my own company Nomadhut to Bermondsey, and I also work part-time for the Bermondsey Business Improvement District. A BID in it’s simplest form is a business association / alliance within a set area, all the businesses get to vote every 5 years on a joint business plan, if there’s a majority vote in favour all the businesses contribute to the collective aims of the organisation (it can do anything the businesses have aspirations to do, subject to budget obvs).
Nomadhut is the follow on to what was Ministry of Startups, MoS was a chain of coworking spaces. Over 8 years we opened 25 different sites in places like Whitechapel, Shoreditch, Spitalfields, Paddington and Canning Town etc. We were the most affordable coworking space in Central London, £35 pcm for unlimited 24/7 access, rolling month to month contracts… everything I did was to help early stage startups start… if the UK economy is to prosper then my belief is we need to be a nation of entrepreneurs and that means making it a viable option for people regardless of background (there’s a longer form version of the why here). We worked with the likes of British Land, Secretary of State, Greycoat, Max Barney Estates etc.
Sadly the lockdowns and work from home requirements of 2020 made the company unviable. My first failure and it hurt, I didn’t realise how much my work was part of my life and reason for being.
Noamdhut is different, in that it’s both coworking and living accommodation, the aim is to identify sites for 10 – 24 people where I can limit the cost to £300 pcm total! giving a early stage startup founder as much runway as possible.
The first site we acquired is in Tenerife, we will hopefully get planning permission asap, with the aim to open in Q3 2025 (this might be a bit optimistic).
I live on a boat on the river, hence the slightly odd photo, I’ll get a proper one up asap.
https://www.instagram.com/nomadhut.life | https://nomadhut.life/
