Cameron, I'm a believer that competition in general is a good thing but you should let demographics and your knowledge of the community dictate your decision. What's the pool of freelancers in St. Louis? If you're going to allow small orgs like, say, early stage startups, how many of those are there? How many employees that work from home (anyone know a good source for that info?)?
I'm looking at opening a space in Austin so I'm in the middle of doing all of this same research. Austin is saturated with about 15 coworking spaces and several startup incubators that also cater to coworkers, but they're still only catering to ~700-800 people total and about half of those are startup employees. With 1500 startups in the Austin area and a yet-to-be-determined number of freelancers and transient workers (people like independent real estate agents that only need part-time office space), there's still an unmet need. With all that, I can't imagine STL is being fully served by only one coworking space! Another big question is where in STL? In Austin, most coworking places are located East with a couple Central, a couple South, and a few North or NW. That maps out pretty well with where the market is but it still leaves large parts of the city unserved. Do you serve the same market? High-end, low-end, startups, students, creatives, developers, etc., etc. Do you offer the same features and services? Probably the most important questions: Do you know the coworking community in STL? How will you get to know them? Coworking spaces are about building communities and they're typically built out of—or as an extension of—existing communities. -- Visit this forum on the web at http://discuss.coworking.com --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Coworking" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
