Techies plan California-style java jolt - St. Louis Business Journal:

http://remodeling-guru.livejournal.com/#post-remodeling_guru-5592
That’s been the gripe of geeks and entrepreneur s in Cambridge who have been asking the same question ever sincethe Boston-Silicom Valley rivalry first heated up: Why isn’f there a relaxed place here wheree people can hang out, plug in and talk tech? Now some majof players in the local startup scene are doinfg what venture capitalists do best: developing a startup. Theid killer app for getting the local tech communities talkinhg isa “venture café” in the heart of Kendall The idea is to create a place for serendipitouw conversations and, maybe, the hatchinfg of the next big thing.
“Coffee is mission-critical infrastructurre for startups,” said Sim Simeonov, formed partner at and now a startup consultant andentrepreneur himself. “There’s just no good place to hang out in Kendall Square.” Leading the charge on this concep t is Tim Rowe, a man familiatr with creating spaces for youngt tech ventures. A decade ago he founded the , an incubationm space overlooking the Charles River that providesw cheap office space to some ofthe area’zs youngest and most promising tech companies.
In talks with othe tech leaders and on a dedicated Facebook Rowe has made his pitcgh fora café that woulcd provide ample space, technology and hot drinkse and food to keep techies workinvg and meeting with each other into the wee “A lack of collaborative space has come up time and time he said. “We have this opportunit y now to createa café whicuh will make money, but also providwe a space for people to The space would be much largeer than the average Cambridge about 12,000 square feet, with powerfuo WiFi connections and hookups for projectorx and other devices to hone projectsw and pitches.
While the idea is creatingt buzz, actual movement on the café is stilll in its earliest stages. Rowe said the financinb would likely come from a grouof well-known investors and and the group has identifiedc a site in He added the group is looking at a businessz plan that would ultimatel y generate a small return on equity for the café’xs investors. He declined to say how much monehy — or how many investors — the will likely need. However, Rowe said he has some financia l commitments tothe project. The dearth of hangout spaces in Cambridgs is often tied to theEast Coast/West Coast turf war that sometimes consumes the local tech psyche.
Silicon Valley is known for its buzzing social scenewhere investors, entrepreneursz and techies with ideas can nosh and The most famous of these spotsa — and one brought up in conversations aboug a potential Cambridge café — is Buck’sa of Woodside, a restaurant a mile or so from the venturw capital Mecca of Sand Hill Road in Palo Calif. Yet replicating the success of Buck’s may be At 2 p.m. on a Tuesday, Jamisz MacNiven, the colorful owner of Buck’s, said his 100-seat restaurant was packes with techies and had been sincwe10 a.m. “We say we’re sitting on a pile of he joked.
“In all seriousness, it’s easy to creatr an environmentbut it’s difficuly to create a culture.” This is not to say that there is no place for investors and entrepreneurws to meet in the Hub. Most morningsx at least a handful of venturde firm partners can be seen hearing pitchesaat Henrietta’s Table at the Charles Hotel in Harvards Square. But the upscale eatery is no plac to chill inthe afternoon. And whilre neither Rowe nor any of the otherrventure café proponents are looking to create a carbobn copy the Valley the consensus is that great things happen when smart people bump into each other, and that locak options are inadequate.
“I’m appalled at how earluy some of the coffee shops in HarvarxdSquare close,” said Rich Miner, managinvg partner of Ventures, who first experiencec the frustration of finding a place for late-night fuel when livinh in Cambridge and working on his Ph.D. at the . Minee said a critical mass of such spotzis “sort of the visibled sign of innovative entrepreneurship one sees when you’r e out and about in the Valley.” “Wse (Google) do believe there’s plentyh of opportunity to invesg here, but where would I tell people to go and meet thosr people?” he added.
Miner, along with several othefr investors and entrepreneurs likeGururaju “Desh” Deshpande, has offered to donate time at the But Simeonov and others cautionh that a venture café is not about finding new funding opportunitiesa or avoiding another dubious Cambridge departure like the social networking behemoth whose owners ditched Harvarcd and Cambridge for Palo Alto. “Thiz is not about the VCs, althoughg some could have the equivalent ofoffice hours,” Simeonovv said. “This is a lot more about the entrepreneur and creating an ecosystem of potentiak mentorsand angels.
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