Submitted by Duncan Cheatle You must know me from Adam

16th November 2006 / Financial Times

(Copyright Financial Times Ltd. 2006. All rights reserved.)

Successful entrepreneurs know all the right people. Jonathan Moules starts his search for like-minded networkers at a London club. With its small brass plate on an anonymous black front door in a side street off London’s Strand, it would be easy to walk straight past Adam Street Club without knowing it is there. But to do so would be to miss one of the hottest hangouts for young British entrepreneurs.

At a typical evening in the subterranean private members’ club you could bump into David Ross, the Carphone Warehouse tycoon, and Luke Johnson, Channel 4 chairman, holding court in one of the function rooms.

Alternatively, you might find yourself at the bar with Alex Tew, founder of The Million Dollar Homepage, Lord Bilimoria of Cobra Beer or Jason Porter of Friends Reunited.

James Murray Wells, who founded his fast growing on-line spectacles business Glasses Direct from his home in Wiltshire, uses Adam Street as a venue for board meetings and refers to it as his private office in London. “At the moment, the whole world seems to revolve around Adam Street,” he says. “It is highly likely that the next new idea in our industry will emerge from Adam Street because the best programmers and entrepreneurs are here.”

He adds: “This is not one of those places full of fuddy-duddies smoking cigars. It is quite cool.”

James Minter created the Adam Street Club in 2001 after more than 10 years in the Royal Navy, using the basement vaults of the Georgian terraced houses owned by his father, a property entrepreneur. The space was used by the Navy for storage in the 18th century, and was later the inspiration for Fagin’s Den in Oliver Twist.

When Mr Minter took over, the vaults were used by the Green Room Actor’s Club; he decided to convert them into a venue for business whizzkids by creating an environment in which people could work and hold meetings as well as relax. “Networking is a dread word”, Mr Minter says, but he knows a lot of it goes on at Adam Street.

He built a restaurant for members and sectioned off a number of rooms for those that pay to hold private events. Several other entrepreneurs’ groups, including a speed networking organiser, use Adam Street.

Mr Minter also created a library, where members can work in peace, and set up broadband internet access throughout the club by installing a wireless network. “I have been given an asset and I have made the best of it,” Mr Minter says.

He admits he has often asked himself whether he would have done as much if he had not had the benefit of taking on his father’s real estate. “Certainly I couldn’t have done it without the buildings,” he says. “Clubs take a long time for the growth to come because by definition you are not letting people in the door.”

Most of Adam Street’s 1,500 members would consider themselves self-made business people, and Mr Minter is an outsider to this group. “I do admire people who have come from nothing, but when you look at it, fate always plays a part.”

Many members say they like the fact that Adam Street is a haven from ac-countants and lawyers trying to sell their services.

James Hibbert, who runs Dress2Kill, a modern bespoke tailoring service, observes: “Membership is by invitation only and you have to be an entrepreneur, so you do feel quite special.”

Mixing with like-minded people helps relieve the loneliness of being an entrepreneur, says Sara McVittie, co-founder and chief executive of Re5ult, a mobile phone information service based in Cambridge. “It is very rare to find people who have been through similar problems except in a place like Adam Street,” she says.

Membership of a club is not the only way to network and many entrepreneurs seem happy to rely on their local chambers of commerce for business support. The internet has also spawned online communities, such as Ecademy, Linked-In and Soflow, used by millions of people around the globe.

Ecademy, founded in London by Penny Power, has more than 100,000 registered users from 186 countries. Only 10 per cent pay an annual subscription, enabling them to send messages to other users or advertise on the website, but this provides 90 per cent of Ecademy’s revenue.

Ms Power says the simplicity of communicating online means a massive number of business referrals are made among users. “They are not a selfish group of people,” she says. “They have got to the stage in their life where they have realised that in order to achieve, you have to be someone who gives.”

Online communities such as Ecademy provide a social network but are not a substitute for face-to-face meetings, Ms Power adds.

Ms McVittie is a member of Linked-In, which enables people to share contact details online, but she feels online communities can suffer by feeling too big. “The reason I join these things is to find key people . . . if they get too big, (they) lose some of their value.”

The Supper Club, which runs round-table dinners in a private room at Adam Street, specialises in intimacy, allowing only entrepreneurs whose businesses have reached Pounds 1m in sales to its sitdown events. They can expect to meet seven or eight like-minded entrepreneurs around the table, says Duncan Cheatle, The Supper Club’s founder. “People like coming to The Supper Club because they get recognition of their achievements,” he says.

A new breed of networking groups have also sprung up across the UK in recent years, such as Business Network International, a business-referral organisation, whose members meet weekly to swap client leads. BNI, which started in California, demands commitment from its members. Everyone must attend each week or send a replacement. And the endless rounds of applause whenever anyone speaks during meetings might be considered too American for some British tastes.

Simone Schehtman runs Teamworks Karting, offering indoor go-karting, with her husband in a former steel components factory in Birmingham’s Eastside. The couple moved the business from London a few years ago and Ms Schehtman has spent a lot of time networking at local business breakfast clubs such as BNI.

“You have to make opportunities where you wouldn’t have thought you would find them,” she says. “A good local supplier might come through a conversation in the local cake shop.” Mr Hibbert tried BNI but says it was too “cheesy” for him. “It is too forced, whereas (at) Adam Street you are not forced to do anything.”

He also believes that a club such as Adam Street would be hard to replicate outside of the capital. “Private members’ clubs are a particularly English, even a London thing,” he says.