Daniel Aarons: From cohort member to community partner
“I saw just how difficult it is for local groups and clubs to find suitable venues for their activities. I knew I needed to create a platform that would serve both parties.”
Daniel Aarons joined the Trampoline programme with an idea and a problem to solve. He had been part of an amateur dramatics group, then a choir, and kept running into the same wall: finding an affordable, available space to meet was far harder than it needed to be. Venues with perfectly good rooms sat half empty through the week. Community groups spent hours on the phone chasing leads that went nowhere. Nobody had built something that connected the two properly. “I witnessed the power of community spirit,” he says. “When nurtured and given the proper resources, communities thrive. But I saw just how difficult it is for local groups and clubs to find suitable venues for their activities. I knew I needed to create a platform that would serve both parties.”
He had worked through the idea during an MBA. Turning it into a business was a different thing entirely. He quit his job, stepped out from behind the planning, and started knocking on doors. Building a two-sided marketplace is one of the harder things a founder can attempt, because growth on one side always depends on growth on the other. More venues needed more groups. More groups needed more venues. That tension does not disappear. You just learn to carry it. “It is constant learning,” he says. “You have to dispel the negative thoughts.”
Working solo, you feel it
What the Trampoline programme gave him, beyond the structure and the mentoring, was something he had not expected to need quite as much: community. The isolation of building alone had a cost he felt daily. “Working solo, you feel it,” he says. The four walls of home. Being part of the cohort gave him a space outside that, people who understood the weight of what he was carrying, and support that helped him sharpen his thinking on social impact, governance, and what sustainable growth looked like for a platform like his.
The results since then have been substantial. Conveenie now lists over 330 community spaces across London, spanning 12 venue types and 19 different activity types, from children’s parties and yoga sessions to choir rehearsals, support groups, and film shoots. The platform has generated more than £100,000 in booking value flowing directly to local venues, with 66% of those venues sitting in an affordable price category. Conveenie has facilitated 13 charity-rate bookings at an average 30% discount, putting space in the hands of organisations that might otherwise have gone without. Hitting 100 listed spaces in year one, Daniel says, felt “surreal.” He has since secured Innovate UK funding to research what makes a choir-friendly venue, published Conveenie’s inaugural impact report, and built university partnerships with Coventry and Oxford that have generated over 2,600 hours of student engagement on live projects. The ambition now is 1,000 spaces, and cities well beyond London.
Some full circle moments are worth celebrating
Daniel has remained a consistent presence in the Trampoline alumni community long after his programme ended. So, when The Enterprise Hub opened, our own coworking and meeting space for entrepreneurs in the heart of Elephant and Castle, listing it on Conveenie felt natural. Recently, we received our first booking through the platform. The founder we once supported is now helping us fill our space. Some full circle moments are worth celebrating.
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