🎉 Coworking celebrations.
💥 The Lab turns 1!
A year ago Cat Johnson launched The Lab to help coworking folks with marketing their spaces, benefits and communities through storytelling. Since then it’s become a virtual community of coworking operators and professionals around the world.
💂♀️ Islington Affordable Workspace Programme launches first space.
Back in week 10 of 2021 I shared how the Islington Council partnered up with the City, University of London to create an inclusive workspace. This week Dale Thomson announced the opening of their first location, alongside a few other big wins.
📰 Coworking updates.
📦 If Elon Musk is living in a house-in-a-box, how long until multi-tenant-offices-in-box?
Bill Murphy take a deep-dive into Elon Musk‘s low-key move into a $50k apartment-in-a-box in Boca Chica, Texas. The story dives into Boxabl, the company behind these shippable living quarters, but it triggered some thoughts for me, namely how long until shippable multi-tenant offices become a thing, and what does that mean for suburban and rural coworking?
🇿🇦 How coworking in Cape Town fared during the pandemic.
In 2019 there were 16 coworking locations in Cape Town’s central business district. It ended 2020 with 15. This story takes a look at how the spaces zigged and zagged to survive and be positioned to thrive as the world reopens and the South African city launches its Digital Nomad Visa.
📊 John from Serendipity Labs shares new membership numbers since Jan 2020.
John Arenas from Serendipity Labs shares another snapshot of their sum of new memberships sold across their network, highlighting the spread across Urban, Suburban, and Secondary markets since Jan 2020. What’s interesting here is the spike in demand, and how Suburban now leads the pack.
🎩 “Workspace needs to become magical, hybrid and exciting.”
In a piece for PropertyWire, Wybo Wijnbergen (prev. managing director of WeWork Europe and now CEO of infinitSpace) shares his insights into how real estate will change and evolve to shape the future of work. He touches on trends we’re seeing, including workspaces positioning as a connector of local businesses, and how “the future of work will be about connection and engagement”.
💸 How PAYG memberships saved a customer 70% of office spend.
Liam Doe from Old Bond Store shared a photo of a monthly report showing exactly how many pay-as-you-go hours were used (462hrs by 23 people) and how much it saved the client vs a traditional office (70%).
🤯 Work and event space company goes “remote-first”
In this post Ryan Simonetti shares why (and how) Convene is shifting from returning to their offices to being remote-first.
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💻 Coworking technology.
Tech news is supported by Syncaroo – who help flex spaces automate their laborious marketing & sales tasks.
🍏 The world’s most profitable company prepares to take over the access control market.
Kyle Hagerty hits this story home with this quote: “The world’s most profitable company is moving in on access control with the same speed and execution that it did with personal computers and cell phones.”
At the recent Worldwide Developer Conference, Apple announced that their devices will be able to store a whole array of new credentials, including door ‘key cards’.
The story goes into why this may become a category killer, as the company with ~1.65 billion devices in use, makes moves to become the central identity service for physical space.
🎢 Booking app shares their rollercoaster founding story.
Jules Robertson shares founding (and relaunch-during-lockdowns) story behind Tally Market, the booking platform whose funding round we shared in Week 17’s newsletter.
🎟 Evolving from an office booking app to a Hybrid Workplace Platform.
Alongside Hubble‘s funding round (also shared this week) and the fact that they’re sticking to a hybrid org strategy – they’ve finally announced 3 additions to their platform. A workspace strategy tool, a pass-program, and perks (psst team Hubble, I’d chat to included about teaming up on perks).
🎟 Tenant experience app rebrands perks program they acquired.
Lane announced that they’d rebranded eServus (which they acquired in Oct 2020) into Lane Perks. Another big shift in the position of value-added benefits for tenants and flex workspace members.
🇭🇰 Hong Kong coworking brand shifts towards multi-space access.
MilkGarage has announced that it has partnered up with another coworking operator to offer access to 28 locations across the city for HK$12,000 per year. This comes after previous partnerships with operators like theDesk and The Great Room positioned the network as a new multi-location booking platform.
🤝 Coworking deals.
📲 Hubble adds £2M in funding.
Freya Pratty shares about Hubble‘s recent £2M round of funding. This brings their total funding to £10M since their founding in 2013.
🗽 Interested in taking over a $880k coworking space in Manhattan?
The folks at DenSwap share a new opportunity for an experienced operator to takeover an established coworking space in Midtown Manhattan. It comes with an existing membership base, furniture, and generated $876k in membership revenue and $8k in event revenue in 2019.
🤝 Real estate software devs Alidade and Spacemate merge.
Whilst the announcement is pretty light on the details, Alidade + Spacemate merging to become AlidadeFlex is a trend I’m seeing across the industry, with technology being rolled into, or packed tightly alongside, more traditional real estate services.
🎙 Coworking conversations.
Jamie Russo chats with Ted Latz about the SUCCESS Space concept and approach. (ICYMI: we shared the launch of SUCCESS Space back in week 20 of 2021)
George Lucas Pfeiffer, Jillian Brown and Charlie Morris chat about hybrid work strategies, trends and policies.
🙏 Thanks.
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