Hub Culture

How Second Home is engineering the new creative hothouse

In 2010, Rohan Silva was a smart young thing pulled from the UK’s Treasury department into the policy unit at No.10 to advise the then prime minister David Cameron. He had already launched the Tech City initiative that established East London’s ‘Silicon Roundabout’ as Europe’s key startup engine. Sam Aldenton, meanwhile, had impeccable new model entrepreneur credentials, opening what he says was London’s first dedicated co-working space in Dalston in 2005 – ‘we took an empty floor in a factory and put lots of desks in it’ – followed by alternative music venue Café Oto and Dalston Roof Park. He also set up street food arena Feast, which is where he first met Silva. The pair bonded immediately. ‘I had hung out at all these places and really liked them,’ says Silva. ‘Then I realised there was this one person connected to all of them and that was really exciting.’

Silva and Aldenton quickly looked for opportunities and hatched a plan. Working life had splintered and atomised. More and more people were working for smaller and more companies, often their own, but the professional infrastructure hadn’t kept pace with those changes. Commercial space was expensive, inflexible and spirit-crushingly dull. The pair also realised that this new workforce of atomised entrepreneurs still wanted to feel physically connected. They understood a fundamental truth: it’s hard to stay energised and motivated when your only company is the cat and a half-empty fridge in your kitchen.

‘Today’s technology means you can work with anyone anywhere, but this means that clustering in physical proximity is more important than ever,’ says Silva. ‘Everyone could be working in the middle of the countryside in their pyjamas, yet they’re not.’