Hi everyone, I'm trying to start a coworking space in Beijing, China, so I thought I should write and introduce myself. The reason I'm interested in this is that I'm also working on a startup, but my other founder lives in Boston. Therefore, I miss exchanging ideas in person much of the time when I work alone in my apartment. I've also worked at coworking spaces before and always enjoyed the feeling. However, there has never been one in Beijing before now.
I've already looked at quite a few offices and lofts, and rent has turned out to be much more expensive than I expected. For a ~210 square meter place, I think I'd need 11-12 people on a monthly plan to cover my costs. So, I have a few questions and would greatly appreciate any advice you may have. First, how many square meters do you end up using per seat? I want to make sure my estimates of how many people can work comfortably in a given space are reasonable. I've just been estimating capacity by walking around inside, and it seems that most of the time my estimate comes out to almost 7 sq. m per person (counting space used for a meeting room and a small place to relax, etc.). How critical is location in general in this business? I'm operating under the assumption that it's really important, since we're basically competing with working from home, and nothing can be more convenient than that. Lastly, we did a survey and the most surprising result to me was that so few people considered a meeting room necessary. How many of your spaces have meeting rooms, and how often are they used? Thanks for your support. I hope that if any of you visit Beijing, you'll stop by and we can work together for a while. -Mike -- 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.
