A bunch of us Tech Startup entrepreneurs were talking yesterday about investigating setting up a Social Enterprise to supply office space to ourselves and others in London - a sort of DiY incubation chamber. (We had also noticed that we had quite a lot of overlapping supply chain / value chain capability which bred potential synergies). There is a real need for this sort of thing, but of the reasonably priced, flexible usage, and highly wired variety. I've also been following Lloyd Davis's work on the
Social Media Cafe project with interest, and we actually looked at the economics of this a few years ago. Thus this article in the
New York Times about just this today is very timely.
The article is also interesting as it goes into the business models:
Citizen Space lets people drop in without paying, but if someone uses the space regularly, the group asks the person to pay for a key. For $350 a month, a worker can rent a desk and get a key to Citizen Space for 24-hour access. For $250 a month, you get only a key. The space has seven desks, a large table for drop-ins, a private conference room, whiteboards and other office amenities — some less typical, like beer and wine.
Ms. Hunt and Mr. Messina say they don’t make a profit on the space. “We could get our own office with 800 square feet and spend the same money,” Mr. Messina said, “or we can be here, and have a space where people can come and work and have meet-ups that serve the community, and it gives us the opportunity to meet some fascinating people.”
Other coworking spaces are set up as businesses. Roman Gelfer, a former equities trader, and Sasha Vasilyuk, a writer, started Sandbox Suites in San Francisco last October, renting out 4,300 square feet on three floors. Their rates start at $135 for a once-a-week drop-in slot and go up to $495 a month for a private desk.
“If you build a space from the ground up for coworking and networking as well, you could do a better job, and I definitely believe it’s a great business,” Mr. Gelfer said.
Still, he allows free events in the space, like hackathons — weekends in which programmers get together and build, say, Facebook applications.
The Hat Factory has a more informal feel. One might call it messy. The lore is that the room, in an industrial loft, once belonged to a woman who made hats. It’s now occupied by a Web video producer, a guy who runs a Web video start-up called Viddyou and a Yahoo employee. About seven others work in the space, which is open during daytime business hours.
There is no doubt that being in an open space with lots of like minded people would be a real boon to a small company or even a SoHo player, not just economically and from an infrastructure point of view. I've found that it is really great to spark off like minded people, and in many ways its better if you are in a collegiate rather than a (competitive) corporate environment.
As to London, the
Co-Working Wiki mentions some existing players:
The Hub : Various membership plans, as of Feb 07 here are some sample plans, prices inc VAT. £295/unlimited, £195/100hrs/month, £115/50hrs/month, £65/25hrs/month
Studio One : £377 per month + VAT
eOffice.net: £599 per month (for office), £129 per month + for hotdesking
Hubworking: £6 per hour for desks, £6 per hour per person for meeting rooms, £25 per month for mailing address
Happiness at Work Desks and offices in Wapping for creatives
These economics are "interesting" in that I think they are still aimed at de facto startups who want office space, rather than truly wired SOHO companies that need a base sometimes - the Institute of Directors is probably the nearest equivalent to a true open source model in London that I know of, its about £300
per annum for a table and wifi, and that in my view is more the sort of economics that make sense for useful SOHO/Social Cafe Co-Working rather than "Company" Co-working. The fact that its nowadays always crowded makes me think that their price point is very attractive, but I could imagine that a few more IT services could be supplied.
What was quite good was the article also discussed the downsides:
Despite such ideals, the arrangement does not always work perfectly. Thor Muller, the chief executive of Get Satisfaction, a San Francisco start-up, said he had opened his offices to friends to come in and work. One day, a friend started aggressively recruiting Satisfaction’s employees for his own start-up, and he was banned from the office.
“There should be honor among start-ups,” Mr. Muller said, still rankled.
Ms. Hunt and Chris Messina, her partner in Citizen Agency, said they have had to make sure that people respect their space and leave it clean.
“Someone wanted to bring her dog in, and we had to say, ‘That actually doesn’t work for us,’ ” Ms. Hunt said. And Mr. Vlahides at the Hat Factory griped about “some humorless European guys” who sat at the common table and talked loudly on their cellphones instead of going outside.
Ah yess....Mobile A**holes....maybe just ban mobiles with smoking inside completely! It also reminded me that some people are less, ummm...socialised? than others - maybe a monthly recommendation system that throws out people who are too insensitive may be required.
