> On 26 September 2012 19:23, Mike <hacksp...@norgie.net> wrote:
>> At first glance this sounds quite insane.  On the other hand, so does
>> the idea of running out a fibre optic Internet connection to the middle
>> of a field (before someone corrects me, I'm thinking CCC not EMF).  So
>> does running your own GSM network (think HAR here) and launching a
>> rocket 25km into the air, I mean who the f*** would let you do that?
>> (As it turns out, you speak to the CAA and they clear the airspace for
>> you.  Doesn't that sounds nuts).  So, back to the question in hand:
>> Could London HackSpace raise the capitial to purchase Kingsway Telephone
>> Exchange from BT Telecommunications PLC?

>> Is it still for sale?  It was placed for sale by BT in 2008.  I can't
>> find any indication that a sale has been completed and so it is my
>> belief that the site is still available.

>> Could we really raise four million pounds?  Obviously for a start it
>> seems extreemly unlikely that we could just find four million quid in a
>> quick whip round.  So we'd have to look to a bank to finance the
>> purchase.  I have no idea how much the plan to charge but it seems
>> sensible that it will depend on the likelyhood of them ever seeing that
>> money again.  So the next question appears to be "how likely is that?"
>> Firstly the good news is that the bank is purchasing a piece of property
>> and it's doing so in the middle of a recession.  In all likelyhood, even
>> if we fuck up really bad, the bank can sell Kingsway for what they paid
>> for it.  That massively reduces their risk.  It's slightly unfortunate
>> that we would not be able to start from the beginning with a MRR that
>> would cover the mothly repayments but that is what banks tend to do when
>> they loan money to businesses and we have plenty of room to grow.  This
>> then brings us onto how we grow our revenue stream.  Firstly, let's look
>> at our standard model - the subscription.  At the moment we are running
>> at a capcity of 500 to 2,600 sq feet of space.  Scaling that up to the
>> 70,000 odd square feet of Kingsway gives us approximatly 25 times the
>> space, hence a theoretical max membership of 12,500.  Let's assume they
>> pay an average subscription of 20 quid a month, that gives a MRR of
>> 250,000 GBP a month or 3,000,000 a year.  Nice.  OK, so that gives us an
>> idea of the supply, what demand can we expect?  Several things work in
>> our favour.  Firstly, for quite a while, we haven't even tried to expand
>> and that suggests that if we put the word out, we can see an
>> acceleration of our current growth.  Second, with a Central London (and
>> let's face it, very fucking cool) location, we make ourselves far more
>> appealing to North, West and South London.  Also, we make ourselves far
>> more accessible to the overground stations and hence to people
>> travlinging in from outside the M25.  We need to further quanitify that.
>> Could we really scale to 12,500 members and how long would that take?
>> One thing that does work in our favour is that having 70,000 sq feet of
>> Central London real estate, while being a group of 500 is that we can
>> rent out what we are not using.  The rental income should help offset
>> the shortage in membership fees.  I suspect aside from subscription, our
>> biggest revenue stream would be venue hire.

>> An idea was suggested (and I'm sure in jest) that we start a pledge.
>> This may not be as insane as it sounds.  Having a certain amount of
>> capital up front is certainly advantagous and anything we don't have to
>> borrow from the bank we don't have to pay back.  To that extent and
>> along similar lines, maybe we could explore something along the lines of
>> lifetime membership.  Offered it return for an upfront payment.

>> In summary, what I'm saying is that the idea appears at first to be
>> bonkers.  With a little though it appears that it *might* be viable.
>> Maybe it's worth doing a litle more research to see if there is any
>> feasibility in it?  Perhaps trying to put some real figures on the
>> numbers above that I've pulled out of my arse.  Maybe working out of
>> there is a realistic probability of a bank lending us some money and, of
>> course, working out if the fucking thing is actually still for sale :-)

> Well volunteered.

> If your property management venture works out, you can certainly count
> London Hackspace in as a tenant as long as the price is below £10/sq
> ft.

> Cheers,

> --
> Russ Garrett
> r...@garrett.co.uk