Click PLAY to watch Will and Rich introducing Hatchery
If you’d like to follow our journey and get updates on our new workspaces, please send us a message, using THE button below.
Originally from the countryside, Will and Rich have spent most of their careers working in cities.
As fate would have it, they separately decided to take a career break, during which they started to consider how they could, respectively, ensure a better work/life balance with more time spent in the rural communities they love. Hatchery is the result of their thinking: a new way of working rural.
We hope Hatchery will help revitalise the countryside economy, set a new benchmark for rural workspace and, most importantly of all, empower people – commuters, entrepreneurs and small businesses – to work on their terms.
meet the hatchery TEAM
Will Bax, Co-Founder
Will describes himself as an urbanist. He is passionate about using his skills as a surveyor, property investor and developer to deliver positive social outcomes. In spite of spending most of his working life in Paris and London his first love is the English countryside, its culture and its communities.
Prior to founding Hatchery, Will worked for Grosvenor. Latterly as the board director responsible for their £4.5bn London estate in Mayfair and Belgravia. Will is currently a trustee of the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich, past Chairman of the Mayfair Neighbourhood Forum and Board member of NWEC, the business improvement district for Oxford Street.
In creating Hatchery, Will is returning to his rural roots and hopes to create a business known as a force for good in rural communities.
Rich Mills, Co-Founder
Rich qualified as a Chartered Accountant whilst working at PwC and spent 5 years specialising in property - initially working with stressed and distressed businesses, before moving into transactions, where he advised on over £14 billion of real estate deals and refinancings across Europe.
He has a passion for innovation and entrepreneurship and, in recent years, has co-founded a craft beer startup; established and run a community connecting entrepreneurs and professionals; and provided operations and administrative support to a small yachting business in New Zealand, whilst on sabbatical in 2018.
When he returned to the UK, Rich decided the time had come to swap his career in the city for the chance to do something useful at a more local level. Through Hatchery, Rich hopes that rural entrepreneurs will be empowered to create and grow successful businesses, breathing a new lease of life into rural communities.
Rich left Hatchery in January 2023 to pursue new opportunities.