

How to start a great coworking space - pmzy
http://gregoiregilbert.com/blog/how-to-start-a-great-coworking-space/

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bsenftner
People in Los Angeles interested in an extremely low cost and creative
coworking space should check out
[https://www.droplabs.net](https://www.droplabs.net). We're located next to
the Brewery, near downtown. Highly creative environment with lots of web, 3D
animation, acting, recording studio, AR/VR, set construction, wardrobe &
makeup, prop construction and more taking place in and all around Droplabs.
Seriously, fuck Santa Monica and it's expensive everything and check out
Droplabs.

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fit2rule
Good public transport options? From my experience, this is very important to a
hackerspace ..

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crabasa
I opened a co-working space in Seattle [1] last year and closed it down in the
same year. I had spent time in several other coworking spaces and was
enthusiastic enough to try my hand at it. To bits of caution here:

1) As the owner of a coworking space, your primary function is to be a
landlord. You will spend much more time than you like thinking about deposits,
pricing, payments, turnover, etc.

2) Building a community is incredibly hard. Harder than most people realize.

[1]
[https://web.archive.org/web/20140406200827/http://devlocal.i...](https://web.archive.org/web/20140406200827/http://devlocal.io/)?

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kaishiro
As someone who has (often) thought about heading down this road - would you
mind sharing why you closed? Was it a purely financial decision or just too
much effort? Feel free to ignore if too personal, obviously.

edit: spelling

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crabasa
Perhaps a decent analogy is the difference between dining out and running a
restaurant. Once the honeymoon is over you realize that you're running a
business that has large capex and terrible margins. You also might be in a
city (Seattle, SF, DC, etc) where you are competing with well-capitalized
juggernauts like WeWork.

And despite your desire to create a community and engender loyalty, most
coworking customers care about price, proximity, amenities and community _in
that order_. I realized within 6 months that a small, boutique coworking space
in Seattle wasn't creating sufficient added value to the community and was a
poor use of real estate, money and my time.

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kaishiro
Gotcha. Really appreciate the follow-up. Thanks.

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daniellemswank
The author is right that community is everything, but it's not something that
you can import. I strongly disagree that you should build your co-working
space around an outside team of entrepreneurs.

You have to build your co-working space around the people in the space. Don't
nickel and dime your members with add-ons of limited value. Have generous
event and friend policies that encourage organic community. Foster connections
between members not between members and outside "advisors". People come and
stay because their friends are there.

In that vein, you should also probably have a mission that's bigger than the
space. A way for people to identify that it's the right place for them,
instead of being another generic space in a sea of generic spaces (at least in
SF).

Offices are real-estate. Co-working is people.

EDIT: I founded a 3000 sq. co-working space in SF.

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worldadventurer
A great resource for those thinking about starting a coworking space - a
community of people who run them:
[https://groups.google.com/d/forum/coworking](https://groups.google.com/d/forum/coworking)

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pmzy
Thank you for sharing it! :)

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akyrho
Another great resource, the coworking wiki :
[http://wiki.coworking.org/w/page/16583831/FrontPage](http://wiki.coworking.org/w/page/16583831/FrontPage)

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pmzy
Nice! Thanks for sharing

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btashton
I have been working out if Surf Incubator in Seattle for a little over two
years and have found the community to be amazing and highlight many of your
points about being more than desk space. The founder Seaton Gras, cares more
about building a startup community in Seattle than anyone I know.

[http://www.surfincubator.com/](http://www.surfincubator.com/)

