
Startups Sharing Office Space? - joeguilmette
I've been given a lot of advice lately to forgo a traditional office and instruct engineers to work from home and meet together once per week with everyone.<p>Do you think other, similarly cash strapped startups would want to share an office? Consider this:<p>One firm would rent a small board-room sized space, with perhaps one small executive office. These are available for around $500-1000/month. The space would be shared with about 5-7 other startups, each paying around $100-150/month to use the space once per week. <p>For the firm leasing the office, the space would be almost free. The firms subletting would have access to a very cheap, fully furnished office.<p>Does this sound like something people would be interested in? Any other thoughts?
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avibryant
Vancouver has something like this, only more elaborate -
<http://abetterplacetowork.com/> . I can also say, from DabbleDB's experience,
that: \- 5-6 people can work quite well together in a boardroom type space,
all sitting around a long table together, especially if they're all used to
working on laptops anyway \- having the executive office in the back is
important so you have somewhere for private meetings and phone calls \-
sharing office space is fun if you like the other company (we've had both
Snipshot and Auctomatic subletting from us at different times) \- even if you
have the office space full time (which we do), people will probably only show
up 3 days a week or so (at least for us, we're most likely all found in the
office from about 11-6 on Tue-Thurs, and spend the rest of the time working
from home/cafes/etc).

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rrival
Have you seen CoWorking? <http://coworking.pbwiki.com/>

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joeguilmette
that looks neat. however, i don't quite get it.

is it a place for people working on a single project or a place where people
working on many different projects can come together?

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qaexl
It's a place where people working on many different projects come together at
the same time to work. It is sorta like working at a coffee shops full of
other startups, without having to pay for the coffee.

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gibsonf1
We actually have good extra space in our SF SOMA office. Let us know if you
need any - maybe we could work out an arrangement. (We also have a phone
system that allows multiple companies to have their own call-in identity)

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vizier
To me, it's worth paying a little money to be close to your team all day. You
can do it cheaply. For example, <http://bunkerstudios.com/> offers space in
San Francisco for about $200/month per person.

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ed
A bunch of people seem to be thinking along these lines.

CIT in Cambridge is one example. In the Bay Area you have CitizenSpace and
HatFactory (both coworking spaces, but I've heard that CitizenSpace is the
better of the two).

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ed
Correction: I meant to say _CIC_ in Cambridge (as someone else already pointed
out).

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mynameishere
Most cities have these (almost) free office spaces called "Starbucks". You can
meet there until revenue starts coming in.

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breck
Similar things: In Cambridge there is the Cambridge Innovation Center(CIC).
Also in Cambridge is Betahouse.

