The first Second Home hub, opened in December 2016 on the first floor of the Ribeira Market in Lisbon, he said, was “filled from day one,” and has a queue of companies and entrepreneurs interested in occupying a desk.
The new hub will have to have a significantly larger area than the current 1,300 square metres, as the goal is to have the capacity to house growing companies.
“Currently, if you need three more people, [the companies] need to leave because there is no additional space,” Silva said in an interview with Lusa News Agency in London.
Last year, the investment was “a seven-figure sum in euros,” but for the new location, investors have given the green light for an “eight-digit amount,” or more than €10 million, but Rohan declined to give a specific figure.
“It’s a very big step but it shows our experience in Lisbon as being a great city to do business and a fantastic response from the creative community,” he added.
Silva wants to replicate in Lisbon the environment in the British capital, where Second Home opened in 2014 in an old carpet factory in the east of the city with 6,000 square metres, which was refurbished by Spanish architectural studio SelgasCano.
The four floors have both individual and small team desks and private studios for companies with up to 50 employees.
Second Home believes it is more than a co-working space and describes itself as a “creative accelerator” and a cultural space, that offers concerts, cinema sessions and conferences.
“We don’t just want to provide a desk in a beautiful space. We are creating a site where you are more likely to be creative and successful. We have an active role in introducing people to each other, in training, in exposing people to ideas and advice to grow,” Silva noted.
In London, the statistics collected show that user companies grew 10 times faster than the national average and that 75 percent of members collaborate with each other on professional projects.
In Lisbon, workers from multinationals such as Volkswagen, Mercedes or Vice magazine, work alongside Portuguese startups, including a surf school and a home delivery company, but lack of space may be limiting growth.
“We do not want to look back and think that Lisbon is only good for startups, and that to grow we have to move to London. That’s what needs to change, to move on from this ‘startup economy’ to a larger economy. That’s the step that the new Second Home will try to take,” he said.
In addition to a second space in Lisbon, Second Home will open two more spaces in London in the coming months and is planning an expansion to the US in Los Angeles.