🔧 Rebooting London’s Startup Spaces: Why We’re Building for Founders Again
A decade ago, Ministry of Startups helped shape London’s early startup ecosystem—before the pandemic killed our vibe… and since then coworking spaces have become lifestyle branding / cookie cutter replicas of WeWork for the upper class. We gave early-stage founders cheap, flexible space in East London to build scrappy prototypes, write code through the night, and launch what came next. Nothing filled the gap apart from wanky rehacks of WeWork, the mid – high price points are there, but they’re not providing for the early stage startups wanting to hack things together.
Now, we’re ready to do it again.
Why Now?
London’s startup scene has evolved. So has the world. But one thing hasn’t changed: founders still need affordable, focused environments to build from zero to one.
Today, most coworking spaces cater to the mid-tier, they’re cookie cutter replicas, with no soul or understanding of what it takes to build something from scratch. But hardware startups don’t the faff—they need drill presses. They need breathing room, reliable bandwidth, and the freedom to burn 18 months of runway without tunnelling to the core.
That’s where we come in.
What We’re Building
We’re launching a new kind of founder-focused space—a series of workshops, studios, and coworking hubs in London, specifically for:
- 🛠️ Hardware and IoT startups
- 🧠 Startup companies in pre-seed to Series A
- 🧪 Creative technologists and product tinkerers
This isn’t generic coworking. It’s:
- Workspace you can actually afford in the early stages
- Prototyping tools and shared gear for physical products
- Early community support from founders, not facilitators
- The spirit of “get scrappy and ship” baked into the walls
From Ministry of Startups to Nomadhut—and Back to London
After building out Ministry of Startups, I launched Nomadhut to explore how global coliving and community spaces could give founders a longer creative runway. We’ve been experimenting with live/work spaces in Tenerife and beyond—places where ideas are born with fewer distractions and more soul.
But London still matters. And there’s a generation of technical founders and independent builders who don’t want an accelerator—they just want a key and a bench.
We’re here to build that.
Want to Get Involved?
We’re:
- 📍 Looking for buildings to convert across East and South London
- 🤝 Inviting early partners and sponsors (tools, hardware, VC etc)
- 🔧 Building a founding member community to shape the first space
Whether you’re a solo builder, ex-VC, robotics hacker, or pre-seed founder looking for a home—we’d love to talk.
Let’s build the next version of London’s founder spaces—
not for influencers. For builders.