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📰 Coworking news & views.
📚 Platform launches the a coworking and flex space glossary #
Whether you’re an owner, operator, investor, landlord, or new team member, OfficeRnD‘s new "flex space glossary" is designed to bring clarity and standardization to our industry.
This looks like a valuable resource for anyone involved in coworking and flex spaces.
👉 Read this.
🐢 Did Jamie win the race by playing it safe? #
TheRealDeal shares a profile on Jamie Hodari, and how Industrious may have "won the flex office race" with WeWork by playing it safe.
“In the Adam Neumann era, we felt like we had to be more adult than we even were, specifically because we were trying to combat a certain reputation in the industry, now that hopefully that reputation is going away, maybe we have more license to be a little quirkier.” Love this quote, and excited to see what a quirkier Industrious looks like.
👉 Read this.
📞 Booth co launches showroom in coworking space #
Michelle Nicolaisen shares how MuteBox (a meeting pod and call booth solution provider) are opening a new showroom in Berlin, within a coworking space through a partnership with Unicorn Workspaces.
It’s been a while since I’ve seen furniture companies partner up publicly with accessible coworking spaces like this. It’s a no-brainer, especially if the space has an easily accessible lobby or lounge area.
👉 Read this.
🧐 Why Tyler co-owns 7 coworking franchise locations #
Tyler Evans answers a short Q&A on franchising service brands. Tyler co-owns 7 coworking franchise locations (6x Venture X, and 1x Office Evolution).
It’s an interesting quick look at an alternative method of franchising and entering the coworking industry.
👉 Read this.
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💻 Coworking technology.
💬 What if you could talk to your floorplans? #
The folks at Archilogic shared how you can use their Slackbot to ‘talk’ to your floorplans. The quick demo video shares examples like asking "do I have any floors with seating capacity greater than 200" or to find three available and adjacent private offices that share a corridor, and then highlighting them on the floorplan.
I’m truly excited about the speed at which platforms are empowering flex space teams to speed up queries and generate usable results, without having to learn new user interfaces, tools or open a dozen plus new tabs. Yes!
👉 Read this.
🇦🇺 Local operator turned their pains into a software play #
Loved reading how two members entrepreneurs went from being members of WOTSO, to discussing tech pain points, building a new system that became Hamlet, helped their workspace teams automate tedious tasks, and incorporated in 2021 with WOTSO taking a 40% stake. Since then the platform has grown to support 60 different coworking locations.
👉 Read this.
📈 Coworking data.
🇺🇸 Who are the largest US operators by no. of locations? #
The recent report by CoworkingMag (part of Yardi) highlights key developments and trends among the top 15 coworking brands in the U.S. this year.
The top 15 US brands (by number of locations) are: Regus (972), HQ (204), WeWork, (173) Industrious (145), Spaces (117), Premier Workspaces (86), Office Evolution (79), Workstyle Flexible Spaces (65), Venture X (46), Intelligent Office (43), Expansive (42), LocalWorks (36), COhatch (34), Serendipity Labs (28) and Lucid Private Offices (27).
What’s changed since the last report? Regus (part of IWG) saw a 17% growth since December 2022, keeping first position. HQ climbed to second place with a meteoric 240% growth from May 2022. WeWork dropped 1 place after closing 73 US locations. Lucid Private Offices joined the top 15 with the second largest growth rate of 23%.
Overall, the U.S. coworking market added 1,166 new locations from December 2022 to the beginning of May 2024 – a 20% increase in the span of more than one year. Meanwhile, the top 15 coworking operators grew their inventory by 14% in total – a sum of 252 new locations.
👉 Read this.
✅ The most important KPIs according to industry experts #
In the recent FlexWorld Series 2024 event, industry experts sat down to discuss the most important metrics to track in a coworking space. Anna Levine (Industrious), Alexandra Livesey (Clockwise) chatted with Mihail Kyosev and Miro Miroslavov (both from OfficeRnD) and discussed different KPIs they monitored on a monthly, weekly and daily cadence.
They dig into an array of metrics from data-driven budgets, to borrowing KPIs from generational cos, digging into public filings, and the different flavors of occupancy numbers.
👉 Read this.
🇬🇧 59% say coworking spaces are the best fit for their business needs #
Three quarters of UK businesses are on the hunt for a new workspace according to new research from digital infrastructure specialist NCG. Of the 1,002 senior decision-makers within UK businesses, 45% of those using flex/coworking spaces shared that they were unlikely to ever rent their own private office again.
👉 Read this.
🧐 What’s going on with sub-10k sqft offices? #
Steve Coulson from Kitt share a new (ungated) white paper sharing insights into the sub-10k sqft office market. Key findings shared include that office leases have decreased by over a third in just five years, down from an average of 8 years to just 5. They also highlight that there’s a shift towards more experience-driven approach to occupying workspace.
👉 Read this.
🔥 UK spaces burning 10,625ish hours per month #
Michael Dubicki shares that Flex Engine analyzed 150 sequential broker leads for a leading UK flex space operator. The study returned some interesting findings around lead qualification, and the time it took to gather, qualify/disqualify leads for the workspace operator.
They estimated around 5k leads are sent from brokers to operators each month, although the number could very well be higher. Extrapolating their findings that 85% of leads are only partially qualified, and that it would take each operator around 15 minutes to qualify or disqualify the lead, the marketplace-wide inefficiency adds up to between 5,312 and 10,625 hours per month.
I’ve shared previously how the time to process leads (including those that don’t fit) can quickly drive up the bundled overheads for all leads. Great to see more public data to quantify how expensive bad (or badly qualified) leads can be for flex space operators.
👉 Read this.
🤝 Coworking market moves.
🇬🇧 Local hub network signs exclusive deal with platform #
Coworking and small business support company TownSq have entered an international partnership with a flex-space management software Baseworx. The deal brings the tech into TownSq’s Cowork Local offering, and makes it available to other UK workspaces.
Why am I sharing news about a space signing up with a management platform? It’s interesting that a network of town hubs has signed up to use the platform that powers the Irish government’s platform for local bookable spaces, ConnectedHubs.
👉 Read this.
🇭🇺 Puzl expands with new location in Budapest #
Sofia-based coworking space Puzl CowOrKing is expanding in the CEE region, funded by undisclosed Hungarian investors.
👉 Read this.
🇮🇳 Local Indian operator raises $12M #
Smartworks, a Gurugram-based office space provider, has raised USD 12 million in a funding round led by Ananta Capital, with participation from around 45 investors including Plutus Capital, Kili Ventures, and Dhawan Family Trust.
👉 Read this.
🇬🇧 Group rolls out flex offering as standalone division. #
Ryan Squelch shares that One Avenue Group have spun their managed workspace offering into a standalone division called Identity Workspace.
👉 Read this.
🏣 Local brand partners with the City of New Albany #
Dave Mirgon shares that Brick House Blue are opening a new location in collab with the City of New Albany.
👉 Read this.
🇬🇧 UK hotel and coworking chain acquired by Blackstone #
Blackstone announced their acquisition of Village Hotels from KSL Capital Partners. The 22-hotel group also own and run VWorks, a coworking brand based within their "well-located assets in large regional cities and suburban areas across the UK".
Why this may matter: ICYMI Blackstone own 70-location brand Fora (the merged entity of The Office Group and Fora) and were exploring a $1.9B sale of the group. Capital Markets are closely watching this sale, as its one of the deals that could set precedent for just how much above "zero dollars per square foot" a flex space business can be valued at.
👉 Read this.
🌍 Two firms partner up to build pan-African network #
Recently*, Workshop17 and KOFISI partnered up to give their shared 10,000 members access to 22 locations across seven countries. Love seeing this kind of cross-brand collaboration!
*The partnership was originally announced in April, but my ask for more contributions from African and South American coworking brands was answered with some great links.
👉 Read this.