ThisWeekInCoworking.com

Week 14, 2022

This week we explored small-town coworking in Canada, crowdfunding to expand, a ยฃ1.4B drop in UK flex space, 2 more platform acquisitions, underdog city expansions and more.
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This Week is sponsored by…Syncaroo

Syncaroo helps automate the most tedious parts of running and filling coworking spaces. Get started today to automatically sync changes and bookings between your management system and a growing number of marketing, lead-gen, and sales platforms.ย 

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๐ŸŽ‰ Coworking celebrations.

๐Ÿฅณ Techspace turns 10!

Philip Ellis shares that Techspace started with just 32 members 10 years ago. They now manage 6 locations across Europe and ~4k members. Congrats!

๐Ÿ‘‰ Read this.

๐ŸŽ‚ InSpark celebrates 5 years!

Huge congrats to Tracey Warren and the InSpark Coworking community!

๐Ÿ‘‰ Read this.

๐Ÿง Hub Civic Quarter turns 1.

Hub Australia celebrates 365ish days since opening the doors of its first space in Canberra.

๐Ÿ‘‰ Read this.

โœŠ Coworking impact.

๐Ÿ‡บ๐Ÿ‡ฆ True stories, photos & videos from coworking spaces in Ukraine

andcards gathered a few true stories from coworking space owners in Kyiv, Ternopil, Vinnytsya and Lviv to give you a glimpse into what life is like right now in Ukraine.

Despite the danger, these spaces remain determined to keep their doors open and continue serving their communities and their country.

๐Ÿ‘‰ Read this.

๐ŸŒฑ Establishing a Green Event Policy

A green event policy is a way to provide guidance for the reduction or elimination of single-use plastics and other waste for any event or meeting held in your facility.

This month’s Coworking IDEA challenge is facilitated by Amy King and Tracy Wilson and invites you to establish a Green Event Policy and post about it to social media on Earth Day (April 22, 2022) with the hashtags #coworkingIDEA #greenevents #singleuseplastics #sustainability #earthday2022

๐Ÿ‘‰ Read this.

๐Ÿ“ฐ Coworking news & views.

๐Ÿค” Are ‘they’ the best and worst thing to happen to coworking?

Gareth Jones shares that now the biggest challenge in coworking is reclaiming the title, which wonโ€™t be easy. Most people in coworking never liked the term in the first place. It means different things to different operators, and its association with all of the rotten stuff in this sector (is it a sector yet?) has shrouded all of the good stuff.

“Without WeWork the coworking industry would still have a big brand building job on its hands. Now it has a rebranding job to do.”

– Shared by Bernie

๐Ÿ‘‰ Read this.

๐Ÿ“น Some thoughts on the future of office buildings

Paul Stanton shares his view on how office buildings worked, work and will work via a diagram and a short video.

From what I’m seeing in both flex and CRE, there’s a lot to agree with here, and I look forward to seeing how right the predictions are by 2027.

๐Ÿ‘‰ Read this.

๐Ÿ‡จ๐Ÿ‡ฆ Coworking in small towns takes off across Canada.

The Globe and Mail shares insight into how small-town coworking is faring across Canada.

The story features comments from Shane Austin from Okanagan coLab, Ashley Proctor from Coworking Canada, Chloe Dumont-Samson from Mountain CoLab and highlights how demand is changing as people relocate from large cities.

– Shared by Coworking Ontario

๐Ÿ‘‰ Read this.

๐Ÿ’ฐ Neighborhood workspace co open crowdfunding for 2nd location.

Sneh Kadakia shares that from HERE are about to break ground on their second location in Princeton Junction (New Jersey), following the successful launch of the first location in Plainfield, NJ in May 2020.

The firm is running an Indiegogo campaign to raise $71,250 for steeped construction costs. Whilst this isn’t the first crowdfunding campaign we’ve seen for a coworking community, it may be a new trend to see heavily community-focussed spaces turning to their local ecosystems for support in covering construction or setup costs. I do wonder why none of the perks include memberships or other kinds of access.

๐Ÿ‘‰ Read this.

๐Ÿคซ A sneak-peak at workspace franchise’s numbers

Giovanni Palavicini shares a video from the United Franchise Group‘s recent Vendor Summit, in which we hear a short summary from Paula Mercer about VentureX‘s progress so far.

Spoiler alert: The franchised coworking network currently have 46 locations across 6 countries, with 12 opening in 2022 and have a target of 75 by end of the year.

๐Ÿ‘‰ Read this.

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๐Ÿ’ป Coworking technology.

๐Ÿ’ฅ Another Instant acquisition

The Instant Group have acquired Coworker.com, a ‘tripadvisor for coworking’ platform, adding it to a stable of flex-focussed digital assets acquired over the last couple of weeks.

In case you missed it, this falls into the wider strategy Instant (and the $421M deal with IWG) are implementing to build a ‘global flex marketplace’ to serve 250k+ businesses.

๐Ÿ‘‰ Read this.

๐Ÿ‘ฉโ€๐Ÿ’ป Community management system announces syncing integration

The andcards team shared their take on their integration with Syncaroo and how it’s designed to allow for “task automations, which means less work and more time spent on what really matters: creativity and community building.”

In the announcement they share benefits like reducing copy-pasting between systems; enabling live-syncing between marketing, lead-gen and sales platforms; and a free upgrade for spaces participating in the #withinUkraine campaign.

๐Ÿ‘‰ Read this.

๐Ÿ“ˆ 14k bookings made through app in March

Steve Jeans shared some of Desana‘s booking stats for March.

Some of those stats are that 14,000 bookings were made across 149 cities, equating to over 125k hours spent in participating workspaces. They offer a bit of perspective too, sharing that in March 2021 they had just 189 bookings (equating to 1,397 hours) across 5 countries.

๐Ÿ‘‰ Read this.

๐Ÿ‡ฎ๐Ÿ‡ณ Real estate consultancy acquires 700+ space network.

Anuj Puri the chairman at ANAROCK Group, shares the news and some background on the firm’s acquisition of myHQ.

The former you may remember from their partnership with Upflex (w25/21), and the latter has 50,000 subscribed members who use over 700 spaces in 7 Indian cities.

The flex workspace platform also partners with cafes, coffee-shots and lounges to provide daytime coworking space, which does bring up an interesting opportunity following the recent Upflex India deal.

Combined the firms look to expand into over 20 cities and expand internationally within the next 12 months.

๐Ÿ‘‰ Read this.

๐Ÿ“ฒ Booking app rebrands, drops coworking from name.

Sarah Sneddon announced that Coworking Nomads is now Perch.

When asked about the reband, Sarah mentioned that it better sits with their mission to make it as easy for operators as possible to offer hourly coworking passes to people on the go.

๐Ÿ‘‰ Read this.

๐Ÿ“ˆ Coworking data.

๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡ง UK’s biggest flex office providers’ portfolio dips by ยฃ1.4B.

David Rawlence from Boodle Hatfield shares an interesting insight into a ‘slight’ dip in the value of the UK’s biggest serviced office providers’ property portfolios. They do highlight that with a shift in demand, and a few of the market moves we’ve already covered in previous newsletters, there is still a lot of growth potential to be realized.

The ยฃ1.4B ($1.84B) drop in value represents a fall from ยฃ25.7B to ยฃ24.3B, however follows 5 years that saw a 300% increase from just ยฃ5.9B.

๐Ÿ‘‰ Read this.

๐Ÿค Coworking market moves.

๐Ÿ• Underdog city rejuvenators announce national expansion.

Bitwise Industries co-CEOs Jake Soberal and Irma Olguin Jr. (who you may remember from the fascinating TED talk I shared in w44/21) recently announced that they’d be expanding to Buffalo, NY; Cheyenne, WY; El Paso, TX; Greeley, CO and Las Cruces, NM.

Originally established in 2013, the firm that provides workspace and truly accessible entry-level programming training within ‘underdog cities’, has since established itself in 3 redeveloped buildings in downtown Fresno. The expansion follows raising over $100M in VC capital in early 2021.

๐Ÿ‘‰ Read this.

๐Ÿ’‚โ€โ™€๏ธ London’s oldest office provider brings back CEO from retirement.

John Drover returns from retirement to once again lead Argyll (prev. London Executive Offices) into it’s post-pandemic recovery.

The article notes that the firm offers 30 premium flexible workspaces and hosts 8,000 professionals across the City of London (and surrounding regions), and claims the firm is London’s oldest office provider.

It also highlights this quote: โ€œThe brand credentials that a prime central London office brings cannot be replaced by a coworking space or remote model.โ€

๐Ÿ‘‰ Read this.

๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡ง Convene opens first international location in London

Ryan Simonetti shares that, after almost 4 years in the making, Convene are opening their first international location.

The space spans 50k sqft and will offer their distinct flavor of meeting, room and work spaces within 22 Bishopsgate, which is almost exactly equidistant from Bank, Fenchurch Street, Aldgate, Monument and Liverpool Street stations.

๐Ÿ‘‰ Read this.

๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡ง WFH-alternative launches 3rd space in Fulham Broadway

Abbie Davies shares that HomeWork Workspace have officially opened their 3rd location in Fulham Broadway.

This location follows recent openings in Putney and Southfields, which focus on providing inspiring workspaces and great coffee as an alternative to folks working from home.

๐Ÿ‘‰ Read this.

๐ŸŽ™ Coworking conversations.

Jamie Russo chats with Jen Thoemke about Connects Workspace, launching a coworking space in a town with less than 20k population, expanding (twice), adding a food hall, and more.

๐ŸŽง Listen to this.

Bernie Mitchell welcomes back Gerald Vanderpuye, co-founder of Impact Brixton, onto the Coworking Values Podcast to discuss the org’s history, their experiences, and the upcoming breakfast event for coworking leaders in London.

๐ŸŽง Listen to this.

Gabriela Hersham (Huckletree), David Hutton (CO-RE), and Alistair Subba Row (Farebrother) speak to Andrew Teacher (Blackstock Consulting) about doubling-down on workspace revival.

๐ŸŽง Listen to this.

๐Ÿ“† Coworking events.

๐Ÿ‘‹ Position yourself as a community leader

Apr 13: Paid workshop for coworking space operators on personal branding and being strategic around online messaging.

๐Ÿ‘‰ Read this.

๐ŸŒฑ Convo: Eco-friendly coworking brands

Apr 29: How can you build an eco-friendly coworking brand and promote a sustainable business?

๐Ÿ‘‰ Read this.

About This.

ThisWeekInCoworking.com is a weekly newsletter summarizing the coworking celebrations, stories, market moves, tech updates and discussions you may have missed.

Newsletters are curated by Hector Kolonas and made available for free via email or this website.

Other Summaries.

Week 20, 2022

This week we saw a grocer + coworking partnership, AI-driven dynamic pricing, airport lounges added to a booking platform, a P3 hub launch, data on average hotdesk pricing, more cross-Atlantic market moves, and more.

๐Ÿ‘‰ Read this.

Week 19, 2022

This week we explore writing down ideas, see coworking stories from London, Canada, Madrid and insights from Australia, as well as look into mail management, state of flex data syncing, e-scooters, what’s happening with those 800 closed locations and more.

๐Ÿ‘‰ Read this.

Week 18, 2022

This week we explore subtext to Airbnb’s announcement, airline miles from workspace bookings, a billion-dollar takeover, 5 million steps for charity, a mega franchise merger and growth in flex demand and supply across US, Canada and the UK.

๐Ÿ‘‰ Read this.

Week 17, 2022

This week we explore 2 coworking opportunities in appliances & hygiene products, a 300% increase in demand, more M&A, tips for coworking tours, and flex arbitrage.

๐Ÿ‘‰ Read this.

Week 16, 2022

An 8.7% dip in local footprint, a US franchise spin out their software, a new academic study, explore ad spend arbitrage and a space partnership aiming for 500 locations.

๐Ÿ‘‰ Read this.

Week 15, 2022

This week we explore if buildings can have souls, the office sector’s cataclysmic change, if architects suck at designing coworking spaces, see WeWork + Yardi partner up, see US flex demand soar up by 58%, a strategic investment tying up SaksWorks + Convene, a $30M investment into coworking in Tier II cities in India, and a prop dev in London doubling down on flex. And more.ย 

๐Ÿ‘‰ Read this.

Week 13, 2022

This week we see ยฃ5k grants for Welsh venues, a trillion dollar tactic become a strategy, a public UK retailer possibly saving millions by shifting to coworking, a proptech coworking space in Germany, a new way to support Ukrainian spaces, a rapid new workspace tech integration and more.

๐Ÿ‘‰ Read this.

Week 12, 2022

This week we see ยฃ1M going to help set up coworking spaces, NFTs, platforms supporting spaces within Ukraine, why we’re still seeing more booking platforms, rewriting the future for women forced out of workย  and more.

๐Ÿ‘‰ Read this.

Week 10, 2022

This week we see the global movement mobilize to support Ukrainian communities, over $13M in funding, IWG + Instant digital merger, a landlord launching flex-access app, a new B-corp in the UK and more.

๐Ÿ‘‰ Read this.