☕️ Coffee Shops: The Original Incubators of Ideas!

A recent meeting with two founders here in FLOK made me think about the history of coffee shops in entrepreneurship (I am a secret history geek).

Long before we had co-working spaces like FLOK, accelerators, or enterprise hubs, the nation's coffee shops were the beating (caffeine fuelled) heart of entrepreneurship.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, London’s bustling coffee houses became known as “penny universities.” For the price of a single cup, anyone could access networks, news, and new ideas. They were (very) noisy, mostly democratic, and full of heated debate and trading — a place where merchants, poets, writers, scientists, and adventurers gathered to test their thinking and forge new ventures.

In fact many of today’s institutions trace their roots back to...a coffee shop. The most famous examples? Lloyd’s of London, which began as Edward Lloyd’s coffee house around 1686. It became a meeting place for shipowners, merchants, and sailors — a hub where risks were shared, voyages were financed, and trade was brokered. The London Stock Exchange started out as Jonathan’s Coffee House in 1698. Stockbrokers who weren’t welcome at the Royal Exchange met in Jonathan’s to trade shares. That “club” became the LSE, shaping modern finance. 

In fact if you were an explorer (entrepreneur) looking to sail off the map in search of the North West passage to access new markets or Captain Cook seeking out new worlds , you went to... a coffee house. There you could find:

• Investors willing to share the risk,

• Shipowners looking for profit,

• Scientists & cartographers chasing discovery,

• And an audience hungry for adventure.

Next time you sit down in a coffee shop and open your Macbook, remember: you’re following in a centuries-old tradition of discovery, risk-taking, and enterprise. ☕️ 🚀

FLOK here in Middlesbrough (from where I typed - just correcting typos) is very much a modern day take on this, it's one of the most diverse spaces you will find, you can be sat next to a movie producer, behind an AI engineer and across from a Yoga teacher. It's buzzing with events and firesides to challenge your thinking and expand your network.

Check it out next time you need to re-charge your entrepreneurial batteries, or if you need to get your team out of the corporate bubble. 

Interested to hear more about the history? Great channel here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqYz0BPdctY