Hmmmm. This is a great discussion. I believe, to be sustainable you have to be profitable and you have to focus on your community. A coworking space requires a lot of work and down the line, as an owner, you will get very frustrated with a financial ball-and-chain. A profitable coworking space and a great culture are not mutually exclusive. We run a profitable space which supports local entrepreneurs and creatives and we have a developed and maintained a very democratically run, collaborative, nurturing space. The key is understanding your metrics and their direct factors. Profitability is tied to quantity of space and space distribution. Culture is tied to programs, space design, member procurement and communication. For us, space and culture are our core businesses and we focus on both equally and it has been working.
Philippe Chetrit Affinity Lab www.affinitylab.com On Mar 18, 9:24 pm, jmproffitt <[email protected]> wrote: > As we're evaluating whether/how to start a coworking office in the > Anchorage area, it strikes me that there's a spectrum of possible > approaches. > > On the one hand, there's the sort of "retail" coworking space where > people simply rent desks by the day, week, month, etc. The space is > helpful to those participating simply by being there. Camaraderie is a > welcome byproduct, but not a primary goal. This business approach is a > pure for-profit play that must make money for the owner(s) to remain > viable. > > At the other end of the spectrum is the break-even "community" > coworking space where the objective is to support independent digital > workers and even foster community amongst them. It might even be an > advocacy space that promotes the businesses that participate in the > coworking venture. In this case, the coworking space might make money, > but that's a byproduct of the venture rather than the primary goal. > > And then there's a spectrum of variations in between these two models. > > A few questions... > > [1] Does that description sound about right to you? > > [2] Is one model more "sustainable" than the other, or is it too early > to tell? Put another way, is the for-profit model more sustainable > because the profit motive draws in enough cash to keep going (and > offers the owner incentive to keep it going), or is the not-for-profit > model more sustainable because the participants are mutually committed > to a shared success? > > [3] Has anyone out there created a coworking space that you would say > has split the two models down the middle, making SOME money but also > actively providing support for participating coworkers by playing > connector / booster? > > --John > jmproffitt [at] gmail [dot] com > @jmproffitt --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Coworking" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/coworking?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
