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40 • The 100 Greatest Ideas for Building the Business of Your Dreams

Idea 27 - Then get an office

Working from home implies a certain type of business - few people, if more than
one, and very little capital put in at the start. If your business is going to be bigger
than this, then make sure you have enough capital to get enough office space. One
venture capital man I know believes wholeheartedly in hiring serviced office space.
Even at £85 per square foot in London, he argued that the provision of reception,
security, cleaning, and typing and photocopying by the sheet, made such an answer
the ideal. This is so particularly because of the short term of the arrangement. If you
grow more quickly than expected or, I suppose, if something goes wrong, you can
get out of such a lease in a month. (Incidentally everyone I spoke to on the topic said
that, however you do things, you should make sure you get more space than you
need to begin with.)

'Look for grants from the Government and local authorities', said another. There
are regional development grants that give you free space for, say, a year and some
will give up to £50,000 as well. This led him to believe that it was foolish to put
anything except a sales office in the south east of England or the Thames Valley. 'If
you have, for example, a development department put them where there is less
competition for the staff, and your office and their housing costs are much lower.'