A new generation of entrepreneurs is congregating in "co-working" spaces across the country.
David Brunelle was living
the dream: He’d shucked his 9-to-5 office job, liberated himself from
the cubicle farm and started his own business. He was working from
home, being his own boss … and before long, wallowing in freedom.
“More often than not, I’d find myself on the couch, playing Xbox at 1
in the afternoon,” says Brunelle, a Seattle web developer. “It became
pretty clear that to be productive, I needed structure, I needed to set
boundaries between my work and my home life, and I needed to be around other people who are serious about their work.”
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Co-Working With Benefits
Here’s an unexpected perk of the co-working movement: A co-working
website that offers overnight accommodations in some of the world’s
great cities, for the fraction of the price of a hotel room.
Headed to New York City? Airbnb
lists a fully equipped studio apartment with a view of the Empire State
Building for $169 a night. Traveling to Paris? There’s an airy
apartment in Le Marais for $140 a night. There are also cheaper, and
less cushy, options: nightly rentals of spare bedrooms, sofa beds,
futons and--yes--air mattresses, for less than $100 a night, in more
than 1,000 cities worldwide.
Airbnb was launched in 2008 after three San Francisco entrepreneurs
recognized the need for lodging in the city. Roommates Joe Gebbia and
Brian Chesky decided to offer up their place, along with some breakfast
and local hospitality, to a few friendly strangers attending a
conference. It was a success, and with help from their tech-savvy
friend Nathan Blecharczyk, the three launched a website, found a few
guests and Airbnb was born. The fully automated site handles secure
online credit card transactions, and includes rich user profiles and user reviews.
—Kara Ohngren
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Fortunately, Brunelle, who launched his web design company last
November, discovered Office Nomads, a 5,000-square-foot collection of
work spaces designed for people just like him: sole proprietors,
freelancers, artists, consultants and other independent workers who
have emerged to work and connect under the same roof.
Their search for a workplace that combines the best of a home office,
an internet cafe and a traditional office has given rise to a whole new
movement, with an awkward but apt name: “co-working.” It’s a dramatic
U-turn in the quest for the perfect work environment--a migration back
to the cubicle from the often-idealized home office, but a cubicle
reimagined for a time when the line between domestic and professional
life has never been more blurred.
Co-working spaces--which cost anywhere from $25 a day for occasional
drop-ins to $500 or more a month--only began popping up a few years ago
in places like New York and San Francisco. Now they are slowly becoming
a national and international phenomenon. The potential is huge: More
than 10 million Americans are self-employed, up from about 8 million in
1980. Freelance job sites are booming, too: Elance.com had postings
jump 40 percent in the first half of this year, while Guru.com saw its
total membership grow by 15% over the year before.
The appeal of co-working seems clear: It provides people like Brunelle
a professional and social package that most alternatives can’t match.
For starters, there’s the real-live-human camaraderie you can’t get
from Facebook or text messaging, as well as the potential for
networking and uncovering new business opportunities. A co-working
office can also offer a sounding board for ideas in an informal
setting. And it relieves, for the most part, the energy-sapping world
of office politics--not to mention blood-draining commutes.
All that, plus a basic support system that typically includes dedicated
spaces for working and for socializing, high-speed internet, a
kitchenette and, naturally, some type of caffeine-dispensing appliance.
Printers and fax machines could also be available. Some spaces sweeten
the package with lockers, showers and yoga classes. Others offer audio-video equipment, organized social outings, consulting services--and one of the newest services: child care.
Capitalizing on the fact that co-workers may have small children in
need of supervision, Cubes&Crayons in Northern California has added
onsite child care at its locations in San Francisco and Mountain View.
What the company calls “professional, developmentally appropriate” care
for children between the ages of 3 months and 5 years is provided
during regular business hours. There’s flexibility in choosing a
plan--full-time, part-time or drop-in. Rates for members range from $17
an hour for occasional drop-ins to a flat fee of $600 per month for 60
hours of care. Cubes&Crayons may be the first, but it is unlikely
to be the last, to start grooming the next generation of co-workers.
But for most people, what makes co-working alluring isn’t the child
care or the yoga but the cooperative spirit and community vibe fostered
by the people who populate those spaces.
Take Tony Bacigalupo. “I was working from home for a web consulting
firm and realized I needed to be around other people and out of the
house,” he explains. “The local café wasn’t great as a work environment
either. Then I discovered there was already a burgeoning movement for
people like me.”
Similar disenchantment with working from home prompted Andrew Luter, a private equity investor in Denver, and Susan Evans, an environmental consultant in Seattle, to turn to co-working at around the same time.
“Isolation,” Evans says, “is an inconvenient byproduct of the concept
of home-office convenience.” For Luter, the problem with working from
home “wasn’t just the distractions, it was the sense of physical and
mental separation.”
Having met enough like-minded people to believe co-working was more than a passing fancy, Bacigalupo, Evans and Luter were soon investing
in the business and helping propel the movement in their respective
cities. In April 2007, Luter opened the Hive in Denver. Seven months
later, Office Nomads, the brainchild of Evans and business partner
Jacob Sayles, began welcoming members in the Capitol Hill neighborhood
of Seattle. And a year after that, Bacigalupo opened New Work City in
Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood. Meanwhile, co-working spaces also were
debuting across the country--and not just in the largest cities but in
smaller urban areas and university towns with thriving populations of
entrepreneurs and independent workers.
Now, less than a year after opening, New Work City hosts anywhere from
40 to 50 full- and part-time members on a given day. To be there, they
can pay a $25 daily drop-in fee or $500 a month for a full-time
membership, which affords them 24/7 access to the space. The Hive,
meanwhile, has roughly 20 members who use its 4,000-square-foot space,
paying $199 per month for 24/7 access. Brunelle is one of about 25
full-time members at Office Nomads; for $475 they get “resident”
status, which comes with a dedicated desk and 24/7 access. There are
also part-timers and drop-ins.
Graphic artists and business consultants, architects and publicists,
authors and code-writers: As diverse and colorful as the co-working
crowd is, there are unifying threads. “No one in here wants to work by
themselves; everyone is here because they want to be here,” Evans says.
And, Bacigalupo adds, co-workers tend to be personable types. “The
jerks rarely stick around, if they come here in the first place, and
they rarely do. These are offices spaces without all the sucky parts of
an office.”
He explains that people spent most of the 20th century figuring out how
to go from blue-collar to white-collar jobs. “Now we’re looking for a
new kind of personal workplace beyond the white-collar environment,” he
says. “I think what we’re seeing now is a resurgence of interest in the
possibilities of the virtual office--a healthier, more sustainable
version of telecommuting.”
The variety of people working in complementary fields can make
co-working spaces fertile ground for new business opportunities, too.
“There’s certainly work being passed to and fro among members,” Evans
says. “That is definitely a consistent theme across co-working spaces.
It’s a huge benefit.”
In the end, it is camaraderie, community and connectedness that fuel
this trend. “It is what members make it,” Evans says, “and they have
made it pretty awesome.”
So awesome, in fact, that Brunelle says he has “no complaints and no
regrets” after six months as an Office Nomads full-timer--even though
it’s meant sacrificing those pajamas-and-Xbox afternoons.
Article by David Port, a freelancer based in denver who writes on small business, and financial and energy issues.
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