🗞 The Video Summary
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.
Get future weekly summaries in your inbox.
🎉 Coworking celebrations.
🥳 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!
👉 Read this.
🎂 InSpark celebrates 5 years!
Huge congrats to Tracey Warren and the InSpark Coworking community!
👉 Read this.
🧁 Hub Civic Quarter turns 1.
Hub Australia celebrates 365ish days since opening the doors of its first space in Canberra.
👉 Read this.
✊ Coworking impact.
🇺🇦 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.
👉 Read this.
🌱 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
👉 Read this.
Coworking news & views.
🤔 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 won’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.”
👉 Read this.
📹 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.
👉 Read this.
🇨🇦 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.
👉 Read this.
💰 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.
👉 Read this.
🤫 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.
👉 Read this.
Share This Week's Summary
💻 Coworking technology.
💥 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.
👉 Read this.
👩💻 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.
👉 Read this.
📈 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.
👉 Read this.
🇮🇳 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.
👉 Read this.
📲 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.
👉 Read this.
Coworking data.
🇬🇧 UK’s biggest flex office providers’ portfolio dips by £1.4B.
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 £1.4B ($1.84B) drop in value represents a fall from £25.7B to £24.3B, however follows 5 years that saw a 300% increase from just £5.9B.
👉 Read this.
Coworking market moves.
🐕 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.
👉 Read this.
💂♀️ 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: “The brand credentials that a prime central London office brings cannot be replaced by a coworking space or remote model.”
👉 Read this.
🇬🇧 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.
👉 Read this.
🇬🇧 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.
👉 Read this.
🎙 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.
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.
Gabriela Hersham (Huckletree), David Hutton (CO-RE), and Alistair Subba Row (Farebrother) speak to Andrew Teacher (Blackstock Consulting) about doubling-down on workspace revival.
📆 Coworking events.
👋 Position yourself as a community leader
Apr 13: Paid workshop for coworking space operators on personal branding and being strategic around online messaging.
👉 Read this.
🌱 Convo: Eco-friendly coworking brands
Apr 29: How can you build an eco-friendly coworking brand and promote a sustainable business?
👉 Read this.