Step 1: Let’s get it started !

The Third Place Blog: Step 1: Let’s get it started !

Hey, my friend, I’m so exited! Let’s talk business!

Part 1: Concept

The First Place is your home. The Second Place is your work. The Third Place is where you can relax, enjoy time with friends, play games, and start new relationships.

Imagine meeting your friends for an evening of board games, poker, PlayStation, table soccer, or darts while enjoying live music or poets, or simply watching a movie projected on a wall – all in one place.

Coffee, tea, juice, and milk are free. We do sell alcohol and cold-cut sandwiches, as well as we do have discounted delivery menus from nearby restaurants. Also, you can bring anything you want to drink, eat, or use. The same applies if you rent the whole place for an event. It will cost $30 to enter with various ways to save. For example, online reservations are $25, each fifth visit is free and we have 3 levels of memberships.

From our About page

Restaurants, coffee houses, lounges, and pretty much anything in Europe have something charming, almost magical – let’s call it soul. Or, let’s call it a creative idea.

Great ideas are amazing – mainly because people love to talk and want to let others know how good or how bad or how different their experience was. And the more powerful or shocking it was, the more sharing there will be. We are talking about word of mouth – the best possible way of free advertising.

Part 2: Money

Well, money part will be interesting, because we don’t have all the money we will need. We do have about $30 000, but our projected expenses for first 6 month are around $100 000. Our options include business loans, investors, fundraising (especially Kickstarter and Indiegogo), friends, family, partners, grants, etc.

We would also share with any ways we know to save money. For example, some landlords who are eager to take a percentage of sales instead of rent or some combination of both. Inventory can be purchased used from Craigslist, eBay, other businesses or China wholesalers.

Part 3: What to do first?

We think that planning and preparation will go a long way and shortcuts should never be used. Ever. Just like in the gym.

We started to look for a software that can help us be focused on our goal, manage steps, and work under a deadline. So we found OmniFocus, created the project “The Third Place,” and defined major milestones. Then, each of those milestones will get divided so that each step is easy and bite sized.

So now we need to set deadlines for each step, and sooner or later our goal will be achieved.

Other tools that we are using are Evernote (to store our ideas, links, passwords, lists of suppliers, etc.), Hackpad (to work simultaneously on the same document over desktop, tablet, or mobile) and Google Spreadsheets (to manage money, expenses, business plan, etc.).