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✊ Coworking impact.
Coworking news & views.
📦 Ecommerce giant taps coworking for 70k sqft in London #
Michael Abrams shares the news that Amazon are taking 70,000 sqft in London at a WeWork location.
I believe it’s a good sign seeing multinationals continue to shift their teams into managed flex spaces, and providing solutions to teams/orgs of this size continues to be a steady trend for firms with enough space and experience at their disposal.
👉 Read this.
🎟 Coworking passes saved Taskrabbit 87% on their office rent #
Tushar Agarwal shares how Taskrabbit saved ~87% of what they were spending on office rent after they closed their offices in 2021, and gave their 400+ employees on-demand access to a network of 1k workspace locations through Hubble Pass.
👉 Read this.
📼 Another lovely coworking video ad #
Rupert Dean shares x+why’s latest compilation video showing what makes their sites different or unique.
What did you notice? Personally, I loved how little of the benefits or ‘product’ was a desk or fast wifi.
👉 Read this.
🧯 Could we start seeing these balls in coworking spaces? #
Youssef Koutari shares a demo video of the ELIDE FIRE extinguishing ball, and the first thing that came to my mind is if these could work in coworking spaces.
Given their speed of putting out sudden fires, could these be good/terrible additions to the fire-safety setup of coworking spaces? Let me know via a reply what you think.
👉 Read this.
💡 What if your members could invest in your space? #
Matthew Davis asks if offering COhatch members the ability to invest in the company is a good or bad idea.
30+ comments later, including from a bunch of people I’ve seen explore this before, still makes it an interesting discussion worth reading through.
👉 Read this.
🤫 What flex space users want to feel #
Lisa Skye summarizes her big takeaway from the GCUC NA conference, in that Jamie Hodari from Industrious shares that every user (employer, employee, and even space staff) want to feel a sense of BELONGING.
They go on to ask “how do we, as operators, CREATE THAT FEELING??”
👉 Read this.
🏙️ Could the fire sale in CRE be a good thing? #
Craig Baute highlights three ways office landlords can react to dropping valuations of their buildings (hold, sell at loss, return to creditors) and how the latter two options could open up opportunities for new entrepreneurial landlords to experiment and partner up with different providers to rebuild value in “dumped properties”.
👉 Read this.
📰 Are remote corporate workers are the future of coworking? #
The New York Times looks at if coworking spaces and ‘displaced’ remote workers are a match made in heaven.
Noting benefits for remote workers like escaping chaotic homes, reduced commutes and finding a community, Roy Furchgott wonders if coworking is no longer ‘just’ for entrepreneurs. They’re right, it isn’t, but nice to see some research showing that 16% of some spaces are now remote workers.
Brands mentioned in a favorable light include American Underground, Regus, Industrious, Hera Hub, and Blackbird House.
👉 Read this.
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💻 Coworking technology.
🗺 UK booking platform adds quick office viewing bookings #
Ieva Dvilinskiene shares that FlowSpace added 3-min booking for office viewings.
Expect more innovation in the way people discover, book and pay for space across the whole flex space product mix.
👉 Read this.
📱 Multi-location operator expands their digital offering #
COhatch share that they’ve now added meeting room bookings to COhatch+, their digital offering which already gives both members and non-members access to local businesses, groups, messaging, workshops, perks, and vacation rentals.
👉 Read this.
😲 A (small) glimpse at the CRE tech landscape #
Sara Maffey shares Houlihan Lokey’s map of the Commercial Real Estate Technology Landscape (h/t to Chris Gough and the team for putting this together).
Now, there’s a LOT of logos there, and there’s even more that aren’t there (trust me, I’d know – this is from 2020 and the list is even bigger now), but what is clear is that there’s a lot of tech that can go into making a building… well… work.
👉 Read this.
✅ A quick framework for streamlining flex space businesses #
Robert Kropp shares the quick framework he uses to help busy flex space professionals clearly think about, and plan, towards streamlining their businesses. Following the framework that looks into user journeys’ whos, hows, wheres and whats, the Syncaroo cofounder shares two tips for getting started with the framework.
👉 Read this.
Coworking data.
🚗 Working near home can cut emissions by up to 90% #
Katharine Chestnut shares a summary from a FastCompany report stating that working near home could slash carbon emissions.
As they state “If you’re trying to convince your company to let you work from a nearby coworking space, or to set up a satellite office in your neighborhood, here’s another argument you can use: It can help slash carbon emissions.”
👉 Read this.
🇸🇬 Flex demand up 25% in 2022 #
Bobby Sodeiri shares that demand in Singapore was up in 2022 from 2021, but surprisingly flex space supply grew at a slower pace (just up 3%) over the same period.
They also note that a similar trend can be seen across the APAC region, where high demand often saw the slowest supply growth. A big opportunity or experienced operators being cautious?
👉 Read this.
🇮🇳 Half of total flex space in India is held by tech cos. #
A report shared by moneycontrol notes that businesses “in India, led by technology firms, are turning to flex space – typically built-to-spec office space with a shorter lease than traditional office sites – as their counterparts elsewhere in the world delay decisions on renting workplaces.”
👉 Read this.
Coworking market moves.
🇧🇪 New Hoxton, means a new Working From #
Eniismore welcomes a new The Hoxton hotel in Brussels. And Lucy Pugh reminds folks that this also means a Working From_ The Hoxton workspace would follow suit.
👉 Read this.
🇬🇧 HKT announces new Liverpool Street location #
Gabriela Hersham shares news of Huckletree Liverpool Street opening its doors in autumn 2023. Interestingly this seems to be in partnership with (or supported by) British Land.
👉 Read this.
🤠 Lucid opens new Houston location #
John Egan shares that Lucid Private Offices (prev. WorkSuites) are preparing to celebrate the opening of their newest location in Upper Kirby.
👉 Read this.
🇮🇳 Brand launching 2.5M sqft flex space in Mumbai #
Shubham Vashisht shares that COWRKS Winchester will be opening soon in Mumbai, spanning across 2.5M sqft and will feature flex and collab spaces, a campus experience and state of the art amenities.
👉 Read this.
🥺 Tech & coworking company furloughs entire workforce #
Bitwise Industries Co-CEO’s Jake Soberal, and Irma Olguin, Jr. Eight held an emergency meeting Monday night to inform their 900+ employees they would all be furloughed effective immediately.
The firm was established in 2013, expanded rapidly and raised $80M from Goldman Sachs, The Motley Fool and others in 2022. Tenants/members will continue to have access to the buildings. The sudden closure leaves employees from the software, training and coworking parts of the business out of work.
Note from Hector: There’s some amazing talented operators who’ve been suddenly let go, if you’d like to be connected to some of them, reply to the email version and I’ll try coordinate some intros.
👉 Read this.
🎙 Coworking conversations.
In this episode of Coworking Out Loud, Cat Johnson talks with video creator, community builder and AV professional Alesia Hendley about being willing to be uncomfortable, the slow roll as a creator and using our differences to grow communities and careers.
Jamie Russo chats with Lance Amato from CANOA about the changing nature of furniture procurement and how it can reduce waste on the Everything Coworking podcast
Jose Morales chats with Elizabeth Dawes Gay about Ìpàdé, the rich history of Dupont Circle and its connection to the African American community in the third episode of the Visionaries podcast series.
Mark Burge chats with Jamie and Giovanni about the growing trend of office building owners entrusting the operations and marketing of their coworking spaces to experienced professionals on the Flex Uncensored podcast.