Second Home, the iconic London-founded coworking company, has applied to appoint administrators, according to court records accessed via Caseboard.
Known for its colourful aesthetics and abundant pot plants, Second Home — founded in 2014 by Rohan Silva, one-time policy advisor to former UK prime minister David Cameron — swiftly became a favourite meeting spot amongst founders and investors in London’s then-nascent startup scene.
Its backers included LocalGlobe cofounder Robin Klein, president of Tencent Martin Lau, the Russian-Israeli billionaire Yuri Milner and top European VC firms Index Ventures and Atomico. It raised more than £60m, and grew to have four sites in London — in Spitalfields, Clerkenwell, London Fields and Holland Park — one in Lisbon and another in Los Angeles.
But Second Home struggled with overrunning costs, even before Covid forced most of its potential customers to work from home. In the first half of 2024, its Los Angeles, Clerkenwell and London Fields sites were removed from its website.
Second Home has been approached for comment.
Turbulent times
The move to appoint administrators follows a turbulent period at the company that saw Silicon Valley billionaire Riaz Valani become the majority shareholder in a cut price rescue deal in October 2022, following years of losses.
Valani put in £7.8m for the controlling stake via his private equity firm Global Asset Capital — a huge markdown from the £130m valuation Second Home held in 2019.
Revenue fell from a high of £9.8m in 2019 to £6.6m in 2021, according to its most recent financial accounts for that year (the company is nearly a year overdue on more recent accounts). Losses hit £13m in 2021, down from a high of £22.7m the previous year.
Silva was terminated as a director in February this year. In April, he took up a new role as chair of Founders Factory in Australia.
In August, Second Home was issued a winding up petition — which are used by creditors to force debtors into liquidation if they fail to pay debt the creditors claim they’re owed — by government agency the UK Insolvency Service, which was later withdrawn.
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