We get asked to customize memberships for companies fairly often, and it's usually an early sign that things aren't going to work out long term :)
We always explain that our memberships and environment are designed specifically for helping people interact with people and for their employees to get the most out of membership, it's much better NOT to sidestep our onboarding process. Every time we've bent this rule we have regretted it. To your point, every corporate member who didn't arrive by their own interest doesn't really seek out the same things - they tend to actually prefer isolation (or at least think that's what they want) and 9 times or of 10 they hole up in a conference room or something like that. They've literally asked for a private office *away* from their coworkers, and that's not the business we are in :) This even surfaces when we have people bring on interns - the best intern situations we've had are ones where a member brings on an intern for 3-6 months and that intern not only gets the benefits of their internship but of being immersed in a professional community like ours. They take away 100x more value than the interns who simply get sequestered away from the action and only show up to execute some grunt work in the shadow of a member. Not saying corporate paid members don't work - again we have quite a few - but people using the "corporate membership" has always created more work and tension for them and for us than it's worth in dollars. One thing we HAVE done for members whose companies pay for them is streamline billing, which works to both of our benefits. They'd often prefer not to pay with a credit card (which surprises me all the time but it's true of all of the bigger corporations who we've interacted with) so rather than deal with monthly receivables and checks getting lost or not recorded or whatever other things can go wrong we decided to do 6 month prepayments by check. That's sweet for us, easier for their accounting department, and all are happy. *But we never do a discount for companies or teams.* Knowing what I know about teams impact on the business and culture of a coworking space <https://www.quora.com/How-does-coworking-spaces-get-to-sign-big-companies-25+employees>, I've considered coming up with a way to charge them more per person because they certainly cost us more in terms of social and human capital. -Alex On Thursday, October 8, 2015, Jeannine van der Linden < [email protected]> wrote: > Funny thing, our process was different but from halfway around the world > from you, I can say that we ended up at nearly the exact same place with > memberships and levels. > > I started out with standard memberships and standard packages. Thereafter > I gave that up and started doing everything on a bespoke basis. This was > great until we appraoched 80 coworkers, at which point it became difficult > and with mroe spaces it became impossible. So then we went back to the > community with the numbers and came up with something we all liked, which > looks very much like what you have there. > > In the "rural" spaces where the population is less than 50K (we have two) > we find far more "non-standard" use of the space and therefore more custom > agreements. (I have scare quites aroudn rural because in the Netherlands a > place with a population under 50K can be quite urban).. > > I also don't see anything about specifically corporate memberships, have > you dealt with that at all? Or do you just approach them all the same? We > have a couple of contracts with large companies who contract for use of the > space by their employees; this is a little weird in the beginning because > the person you deal with to set up the membership and the person who > actually shows up are not the same but also they have different interests. > We haven't had a direct conflict yet but it took a little getting used to > for everybody. > > In any event, the setup for corporate memberships turns out to be also > mostly custom. At least here. > > Cheers, > > Jeannine > > On Monday, October 5, 2015 at 7:06:52 PM UTC+2, Alex Hillman wrote: >> >> I got a LOT of emails off list about my reply to this post, so I decided >> to put a little extra time into fleshing it out and filled in some more >> specific details that I left out of my original post. I give you... >> >> The ultimate guide to structuring your coworking space memberships >> <http://dangerouslyawesome.com/2015/10/the-ultimate-guide-to-structuring-your-coworking-space-memberships/> >> >> >> :) >> >> Did I miss something you want to know more about? Or leave something out? >> Lemme know. >> >> -Alex >> >>> >>>> >>> -- > 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/d/optout. > -- 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/d/optout.
