Nik Butler: Could Horsham spawn the next big internet thing?

Networking as an attempt to gather business cards or dangle ‘wonderful opportunities’ are consistently frowned upon. The coworking community of Horsham is an example of many small businesses that are oft neglected when well meaning attempts are fostered to encourage ‘buying local’.

Small Business has always been more than ‘shops’ they require more than monthly paychecks to support. Small businesses today require space and facilities to grow and this no longer means renting square footage.

Just as towns have grown at the banks of rivers, canals, rail links and intersections of roads so the Internet based ‘Knowledge Economy’ is washing up on the shores of many a market town around the country.

Sadly the experience of many in charge of local and national government is in growth through building and property rental; not intellect and data.

The Horsham coworking community provides demonstrable evidence that the Net is creating a meeting point online in which business and creativity is thriving. The general assumption is that a few Microbiz’s and some managed offices will be all that businesses need to grow.

These assumptions are from those who are still locked in the property and rental growth economy backed by landlords who need everyone to keep renting. Meanwhile employers and freelancers unshackled by smartphones, laptops and tablets are free to work where the WIFI exists.

Communications, meetings, orders, invoices and bill payments require little in the way of office architecture. As this community of workers grows; Horsham may appear an attractive option to those who are mobile in their mentality.

Silicon Valley and the Shoreditch Tech Hub have been reaching out to these individuals for the last decade and in doing so they spawned the Facebooks and Moshi Monsters that made millions, if not billions. So as those few co-workers gather one more time in 2013 to spend a day working together and sharing tales of custom and business I will be watching the group closely and I will wonder if amongst them is the possibility for the next big Internet thing. Horsham has the choice this decade to capture that opportunity or to ignore it by building more unnecessary office space.