In the current world, you don’t have to be a professional to begin making a living. Companies are realizing the advantages of mobilizing the workforce, and that means that you may work remotely instead of visiting an office away from your house. Employee hiring is gradually moving towards a contract based version. Many folks still spend more time commuting and at the workplace than houses. Work is something which will consume the majority of the time in your life and thus the need for community in the workspace is greater than it has ever been.
Automation is taking over the venture and production world. There are far more opportunities available than in the past. So people have more incentive and motivation to start their own ventures.
Since the actual estate prices continue to grow, as any commercial real estate agent would tell you, more and more businesses are realizing the requirement of having a more efficient square footage cost of an office and thinking of joining or starting a coworking space.
It’s evident that the future of coworking hasn’t been brighter! Shared office spaces will be the future.
Coworking spaces are basically shared workspaces marketed as venues. This concept of venue for hire has been gaining popularity not just in Melbourne, but all over the world. But now, coworking means shared-everything.
Problem Coworking Spaces fix:
- Wastage of unused space and hence cash
- Scalability of office space as the staff grows
- Diverse Community to bounce off ideas and take comments (and maybe locate your very first customers)
- Overheads of office upkeep
- Reduce upfront costs of setting up a workplace
- Usually, event venues have affiliations to bigger spaces that you can rent for a discount. These spaces are, for example, conference venues and ballrooms that are in Melbourne or is in close proximity to the co-working space.
- Working from home creates procrastination. Alternative to offices.
- Who uses Coworking Spaces:
- Full-time freelancers
- Startups
- Professional who work after hours side projects
- Remote employees
Important features for a successful Coworking Space:
- Location: Be in the ecosystem of this market that you’re targeting. Or target a location where demand is high but supply is quite less. Be situated near places where public transportation is easily available.
- Partner/Platform credits (Eg: AWS, GSuite etc)
- Community: It’s super essential to building an online and offline community to keep the users participated.
- Cafeteria/Pantry with coffee, snacks, food & drinks
- Conference rooms, Meeting rooms
- Events: Events help keep the present customers participated and bring in new leads to your space(free advertising)
- Top complaints: Poor internet connections, noise levels and lack of privacy has to be taken care of
- Plans and Pricing: The ability to identify the target market and being able to make plans catered to them
- Mentor and investor network: Mentorship and investment are the top challenges Startups confront.
- Facilities: People look for constructive and effective work ambience. People nowadays are also looking for recreational areas in their co-working spaces.
- Technical assistance for business IT support should be readily available especially as businesses today rely heavily on IT systems and technologies to work.
Purchase side issues:
- 24/7 distance: many localities do not allow a professional to be available 24/7 that your consumers might need. You can also double sell the distance daily shifts and night shifts to earn additional profits.
- Rent/Security: Security deposit to rented spaces and rent themselves are extremely large and paid in advance.
- Transportation: Commute is a significant deciding factor for anyone to choose a coworking space
- Price of construction/renovation
- Misc: Parking space, electricity, water, office boys
Threats to an Independent Co-working Spaces:
- Big co-working spaces: Awfis and Innov8 (increased in a rumoured valuation of $2 M) have increased enormous funding from VC’s and are opening a series of coworking distances and expanding into a franchise model.
- Already established coworking spaces such as 91springboard are rapidly expanding into a chain of coworking spaces with facilities such as work from any other office branch. 91springboard has cloud computing services integrated
in them which made this possible. - Global giants entering the local market and potentially disrupting businesses.
- An increasing number of Incubators/Accelerators are putting up and supplying free co-working spaces
- Joint venture Real estate companies, landlords, and corporations are beginning to deliver the coworking encounter to their own buildings as an amenity and hiring coworking space operators to professionally handle them.
Opportunities:
- Lot’s of co-working aggregators are popping up. Tie up to create prospects.
- Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities: Untapped marketplace with lots of professionals willing to stay and work out of
- Sector particular coworking spaces — Eg: just for freelancers, just for artists.
- Service marketplaces for entrepreneurs eg: In-house design, development, testing, marketing teams
- Coworking space direction platforms. Dedicated CRM systems to manage the co-working space(s)
- Green regions in coworking spaces — More and more people are demanding green air from the coworking area and they do not mind paying a little extra because of this.
- Investor matchmaking: If your prime goal is Startups, they’re always searching for investors. Build a relationship with investors and help them raise funds.
- Coworking area for females: Women-centric coworking spaces which make them feel safe and appeal to their special needs.
- Long term and short term plans: As the workforce goes portable, a lot of people are searching for short-term distances to work from.
- The invitation just coworking spaces: Make them feel like the chosen one. Construct an elite class of individuals working from your area.
- Crowdfunding to purchase/rent buildings (Canadian version ) and turning them into coworking spaces. Surplus cash, high demand.
- Co-working Reviews: Reviews from those who have or are worked from coworking spaces.
- Co-working visa applications, global travellers, Entrepreneur tour programs like Entrepreneurs and HackerParadise.
Tips:
- Overbook. Unit economics are better that way. Constantly keep extra desks. (It is like how gyms make money. people sign up but seldom appear.)
- Start Prebooking the distance 1–two months ahead of launch with a maximum capacity
- Charge for Seminar room and meeting rooms
- Target distant workers of associations based in the
developer world - Host Mentor Sessions and Connect startups with investors
- Unexplored/niche classes to goal: Musicians, sports people, Artists, Gamers
- Don’t make the assumption that people will come to your establishment just because you have built it. Spend on community construction and marketing.
- Members attract more members. Focus on keeping them happy.
- Try taking references from several coworking spaces before you start (they do provide day passes and free trials)
- Prices versus Amenities: Do not overprice or undercut your competitors hugely.
- Legal and Financial principles are very important. But it is beyond the scope of this post.
- Try to avoid paying for retail property agents or brokers. Find the space yourself.
- Furniture and Fixtures: When the proprietor isn’t furnishing the rate, you can get really good stuff in the secondhand sector. Buy, don’t rent.
- Coffee etc can be really really expensive. Buy a Coffee Machine! You can even rent it which is generally cheaper and pay-per-use.
