Friday club opens to support business

There’s a double-fronted brick house in Agnes St, East Melbourne, that has an open door on Fridays for businesses at the “pre-revenue” stage.

Local investor Chris Grey inherited the house from his father who bought it 37 years ago.

He wants to see the property put to good use as new ways of working evolve out of COVID.

The renovated house has 28 desks, some hot and others permanently occupied by small businesses which all aim to have a social impact.

Mr Grey noticed that since Agnes (as he calls the enterprise) re-opened, no-one was turning up for work on Fridays and that some larger businesses were saying, for example, that they needed 10 desks and a room one day a week.

He concluded that Melbourne’s extensive lockdown had created new ways of working which were opening up opportunities for a more flexible and creative approach to office space.

That’s when he came up with the idea of the Friday club for founders of early-stage businesses so they could test their ideas and learn from each other.

Every Friday at noon he opens Agnes’s doors to those who want to join.

A proviso for joining is that the idea being tested seeks to solve a social problem.

Chris said some founders were driven and had given up successful careers because “once they see a problem they can’t unsee it”.

One founder was so upset when her aunt died that she began tackling the problem of finding accommodation quickly for country people seeking medical help in the city.

Another business targets “maths anxiety” and a third is based on an app for dealing with the management of dementia. The app has just won an innovation prize.

Chris, who ran and sold a successful IT business in aged care, helps critically appraise ideas in terms of whether the problem they tackle is real and pervasive and if people would be prepared to pay for it to be solved.

Many office hubs and networks throw people together without a focus but at Agnes Chris is in the business of building teams and finding funding for these pre-revenue businesses.

“How do you make sure you’re ready?” Chris asked. “You have to build a team. You can’t do it all. We provide connections, coaching and capital. We’re particularly interested in working with female founders.”

Agnes has found pre-seed investors for two of the three projects, both founded by women. Chris wants to see them grow.

Chris and his dad have both run businesses at the East Melbourne house and when Chris’s IT company expanded he rented a floor in a building around the corner because his staff did not want to leave the suburb.

He’s committed to this quiet East Melbourne street which he says is close to both Richmond and the top of Collins St.

Chris said people stayed home on Fridays because they’d rather drink with their local mates and go to sport with their kids than be in town.