42. Sharesy – a marketplace for booking local community venues

Founder: Felix Atkin
Founded: 2020
Website: sharesy.com

Cast your mind back to the very height of lockdown in 2020. All non-essential work and leisure spaces were closed, and none of us knew when we’d next be venturing into them. You couldn’t choose a stranger time to launch a new venue-hire business.

But, that’s exactly the opportunity Felix Atkin saw, when he launched Sharesy mid-pandemic.

“My initial idea was to create a social enterprise to help the schools in Barnet, my local area, to become more self-sustaining, in light of the reduced government funding and increased costs,” Atkin tells us. “I then met our first angel investors, who saw the bigger opportunity.”

Felix came away with a new vision of serving community venues anywhere in the UK and beyond. “I saw an opportunity to create a marketplace platform to help schools and other local community venues make better use of their spaces at scale.”

I saw an opportunity to create a marketplace platform to help schools and other local community venues make better use of their spaces at scale

Sharesy is now building a marketplace to empower the UK’s 73k schools, places of worship and community centres to hire out their spaces to a growing audience of local bookers.

It’s addressing the problem of underfunded and underutilised venues that are in danger of disappearing from our communities. The platform helps people of any background or budget to find suitable spaces for their events. For bookers, it means no more countless back-and-forth phone calls and emails trying to find an event space. For venues, it means no more relying on already-strained staff or volunteers to arrange such bookings.

Through Sharesy, venues can easily control their pricing and availability, and decide on the events they will and won’t accept. Users can instantly book a space thanks to the platform’s ‘live availability’ feature. 

The moment I was most proud of was walking past a Sharesy-supported community church and seeing the roof being repaired

The platform went live in February 2022, and has been growing ever since, which will be heartening for the wide group of angel investors who backed the startup’s potential. 

Over 10k sessions were booked by clients through Sharesy in 2023, with over half being long-term, repeat sessions. It’s great news for the venues using Sharesy, which Felix tells us generate £18k a year on average, rising to over £100k a year for top performing venues.

For Felix, it’s all terrific reassurance for that brave business decision back in the days of lockdown. However, his most satisfying moment to date isn’t on the revenue sheet. 

“The moment I was most proud of was walking past a community church and seeing the roof being repaired. The vicar had previously mentioned to me how desperate he was to undertake repairs to the building, to enable them to continue supporting local community activities. Having raised over £20k on Sharesy, he was able to complete the work.”