September 4, 2012 at 18:01

How to open a coworking center: a detailed guide

    Six months ago, a team of a few enthusiasts has opened in St. Petersburg coworking center Coverage . Over the past time, a dozen centers have opened throughout the country. We decided to share our knowledge with all current and future creators of workspaces. According to our estimates, by the end of 2013, in Russia there will be more than 100 coworking centers.



    Command

    • The main roles that need to be distributed among the team members: administrator, space designer, technical issues, promotion, events, community, special projects.
    • As a rule, the main team will include 4-8 people and another 5-20 volunteers or friends of the project.
    • Salaries from the first day. Several strong professionals at the start will significantly improve the result compared to a fully volunteer team.
    • Coworking is the business of thousands of little things. You won’t hold everything in your head, so you need to use wikis, Google docks or Trello / Basecamp / Asana.


    A place

    • Location: ideally, 1-2 minutes from the metro, city center, creative projects in the neighborhood.
    • Atmosphere of space: high ceilings, windows, view, brick, history of the place.
    • A good place is worth the money. Bad location will not pay off with any difficulty.
    • Kitchen and round-the-clock access completely change the culture of the place.




    Community

    • The city is divided into hundreds of microcultures. Most likely, you will not be able to make a place immediately for everyone. Think about who you are targeting. Artists and designers gather in one place, programmers in another, sales people in the third, young mothers in the fourth. It is unlikely that they will be able to make an optimal place for everyone at once.
    • The place is determined by the brightest people who were involved in its activities. Think about who is the dream guest for your space.
    • Try to bring maximum benefit to the people around you: promotional support, providing space, communication, exchange of experience.


    Promotion

    • Content: photo reports, live broadcasts, video lectures, slides, reading lists.
    • Coworking is an ideal partner for local media: a place for photography, interviews, a communications center, a distribution point, a source of events for city posters.
    • Promotional support from opinion leaders and other spaces. For its part, coworking provides space on favorable terms, places posters and handouts.


    Events

    • You must immediately write a detailed rider sites and rental conditions. To whom space is rented out for free or at a friendly price tag, to whom for the full price. Make an application form, popularize the possibility of events in coworking.
    • Most of the money comes from weekend markets and thematic conferences. Often it makes sense to agree on a division of revenue, rather than a solid rental rate.


    Education

    • Properly organized educational programs can bring almost half of the revenue of the coworking center.
    • Programs can consist of a selling (free or cheap) open source program and paid courses.
    • In the first season, it is worth making a lot of pilot programs in different directions, then focus on the most popular ones.




    Space design

    • As much work and investment as possible should be done in the first month of work, at the maximum of enthusiasm and rush. Further improvements and new budgets are given much more work.
    • Design is a process. Do not rely on a brilliant master plan, in which everything will be spelled out right away. The arrangement of furniture, zoning, the rules change every day.
    • It is worth the maximum to work with partners on bartner terms: video broadcasts, tea, landscaping of offices, bicycles, architects, graphic design, drawing schools, videos, sound rental, frameless furniture, board games, delivery of woks, coffee breaks.
    • We need attention to what the inhabitants do: where they talk on the phone, where they read, where they negotiate, where they talk. Spot flaws and come up with improvements.
    • A huge common table will hold the community together and will be the center of all processes on the site.
    • Each space has its own chip. Someone has a second floor and a punching bag, someone has a location in the park, someone has a slackline, a unicycle and juggler balls.
    • Good artists copy, great artists steal. Study the experience of creative spaces and offices around the world, find interesting ideas and adapt them to your project.


    Order

    • The main objective of the rules is to regulate the use of shared resources. Main issues: silence, meeting room, kitchen, dishes, jobs, change shoes.
    • It is worth making a list of the most frequently violated rules, hanging them on the walls. Who has violated, goes to take out the trash.


    Finance

    • Revenues of the coworking center consist of coworking services, rental for events, own educational programs and corporate partnerships.
    • To be a plus, you need to be more than just coworking. Possible options: own educational programs, a cafe or a “minute-ruble” model, combination with a hostel, ownership space, low rental rate in exchange for repairs, government support.
    • Reaching the operational payback is quite realistic for 3-4 months of work. To recoup the investments at the start, you will have to work one and a half to two years. According to the DeskMag website, “any two-year-old coworking is a plus.”


    Each coworking has its own path. Site Tips are based on six months of active work. During this time, 100 coworkers worked for us, 10,000 people were in our space at open events. Now we are on operational payback. Many lectures were broadcast live or filmed on video, we advise you to look, for example, How to write an investment proposal , Development of b2b projects and Work with the media .

    In conclusion, we will share the list of the most noticeable (in our opinion) coworking centers in Russia. If you forgot someone - throw links in the comments, add)



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