Re: [Coworking] My morbid curiosity with Coworking Space Closings
Looking at our own membership levels (we have full time, 3 days/week, 1 day/week, 1 day/month), far and away the highest churn rates are in that 1 day/week level. 40% of all cancelations we’ve had are from that level. 1 day a week churns more than 1 day a month. That’s a pretty HUGE clue about what the problem is. -Alex -- The #1 mistake in community building is doing it by yourself. Join the list: http://coworkingweekly.com Listen to the podcast: http://listen.coworkingweekly.com On Fri, Feb 6, 2015 at 4:29 PM, Andy Soell aso...@gmail.com wrote: I think there's a great deal of truth here, and I'm really curious about other space's approaches to different membership levels (we're getting way off topic here, but whatever). I think Jerome is absolutely right that it's much harder to keep a part timer on board, probably due to their lack of commitment and the fact that they just by nature of their membership aren't around very much. At the same time, I also completely believe that a good community is a diverse community, and that includes an even distribution of people across different membership levels. Looking at our own membership levels (we have full time, 3 days/week, 1 day/week, 1 day/month), far and away the highest churn rates are in that 1 day/week level. 40% of all cancelations we've had are from that level. I'm not sure what—if anything—is to be done about it, but I'm curious what people have found useful in keeping people coming back who aren't coming every day. I like offering once-a-week memberships, because I really think everyone needs to get out of the house at least once a week, but it seems like that's the level at which people eventually forget about the coworking space and just drop off the face of the earth. On Friday, January 30, 2015 at 11:18:22 AM UTC-5, Jerome wrote: I think the below typically applies to smaller coworking spaces. Well, let me rephrase: the below is required for smaller spaces larger spaces does not need to follow the below rule; BUT, should they, yes, I agree that the below would be ideal. That said, from my experience of being in the trenches for now, 7 years, I can comfortably say that recruiting full-timers is MUCH easier than part-timers. Part-timers have to me, seem only part-ly motivated to join, whether due to (1) they don’t want to spend $; (2) they’re so attached with their status quo of their home office; (3) their interest is so 50/50 fickle, any little thing can wane their interest. Also, if you were to spend, say, 1 hour per new part-timer member, between the tour, follow-up(s), onboarding…to yield $100, and your goal is 10 members, then you’ll spend 10 hours for those “sales”. If you were to spend, say, the same 1 hour per new full-timer to yield $300, then you’d only need to spend a little over 3 hours for those “sales”. The spread worsens if you seek $10k, or $20k. The very same many DIY/automated billing and other admin procedures you’ve focused to minimize, is being offset by exponentially more labor time to sell, or “cost of sales”. Is that the reason why exec suites probably only ‘rent’ full-time office spaces? Yes. Same efforts that yield way more $ revenue. Is there a better mix between the below strategy and exec suites? Yes. And that will depend upon how you operate, your demographics, your size space, etc. *JEROME CHANG* *WEST: Santa Monica* 1450 2nd Street (@Broadway) | Santa Monica CA 90401 ph: (310) 526-2255 *CENTRAL: Mid-Wilshire* 5405 Wilshire Blvd (2 blocks west of La Brea) | Los Angeles CA 90036 ph: (323) 330-9505 *EAST: Downtown* 529 S. Broadway, Suite 4000 (@Pershing Square) | Los Angeles CA 90013 ph: (213) 550-2235 http://www.yelp.com/biz/blankspaces-los-angeles https://twitter.com/BLANKSPACES https://www.facebook.com/pages/BLANKSPACES/132257631339 https://www.facebook.com/pages/BLANKSPACES/132257631339 http://www.linkedin.com/company/blankspaces?trk=top_nav_home http://vimeo.com/blankspaces http://vimeo.com/blankspaces On Jan 30, 2015, at 6:11 AM, rachel young rac...@camaraderie.ca javascript: wrote: I'll add another item to Jonathan\s list: 4 - Less diversity. 100 members with a flex or part time membership is 3x as many different occupations, passions, life experiences, and hobbies than 35 members with a full time membership, so the mix of people that members interact with will be much less with full time people packed in, but you can cap the number of full time members and ensure there are more part time or flex to make that diversity even more apparent and effective. We have three membership levels: lite, part time, and full time. I always aim for a mix of approximately 30%, 50%, 20%, respectively, with no cap on daypass users or non-space usage memberships (virtual/non-space usage network membership only). r. *rachel
Re: [Coworking] My morbid curiosity with Coworking Space Closings
* Looking at our own membership levels (we have full time, 3 days/week, 1 day/week, 1 day/month), far and away the highest churn rates are in that 1 day/week level. 40% of all cancelations we’ve had are from that level. * 1 day a week churns *more* than 1 day a month. That’s a pretty HUGE clue about what the problem is. I'm curious what percentage of your membership is on that 1 day/week plan. When we opened, we didn't have that level, but people wanted to join at that level, so we created it. We've consistently had between 40-50% of members on our 5 days/month level (it's easier to bill as days per month, and more flexible for the member). I'd expect the percentage of churn to reflect the percentage of membership, but now you're giving me homework to do this weekend and further break down my churn stats by membership tier to see if that holds true. --- Glen Ferguson Cowork Frederick 122 E Patrick St Frederick, MD 21701-5630 +1 (301) 732-5165 www.coworkfrederick.com @CoworkFrederick http://twitter.com/CoworkFrederick On Fri, Feb 6, 2015 at 4:58 PM, Alex Hillman dangerouslyawes...@gmail.com wrote: * Looking at our own membership levels (we have full time, 3 days/week, 1 day/week, 1 day/month), far and away the highest churn rates are in that 1 day/week level. 40% of all cancelations we’ve had are from that level. * 1 day a week churns *more* than 1 day a month. That’s a pretty HUGE clue about what the problem is. -Alex -- *The #1 mistake in community building is doing it by yourself.* Join the list: http://coworkingweekly.com Listen to the podcast: http://listen.coworkingweekly.com On Fri, Feb 6, 2015 at 4:29 PM, Andy Soell aso...@gmail.com wrote: I think there's a great deal of truth here, and I'm really curious about other space's approaches to different membership levels (we're getting way off topic here, but whatever). I think Jerome is absolutely right that it's much harder to keep a part timer on board, probably due to their lack of commitment and the fact that they just by nature of their membership aren't around very much. At the same time, I also completely believe that a good community is a diverse community, and that includes an even distribution of people across different membership levels. Looking at our own membership levels (we have full time, 3 days/week, 1 day/week, 1 day/month), far and away the highest churn rates are in that 1 day/week level. 40% of all cancelations we've had are from that level. I'm not sure what—if anything—is to be done about it, but I'm curious what people have found useful in keeping people coming back who aren't coming every day. I like offering once-a-week memberships, because I really think everyone needs to get out of the house at least once a week, but it seems like that's the level at which people eventually forget about the coworking space and just drop off the face of the earth. On Friday, January 30, 2015 at 11:18:22 AM UTC-5, Jerome wrote: I think the below typically applies to smaller coworking spaces. Well, let me rephrase: the below is required for smaller spaces larger spaces does not need to follow the below rule; BUT, should they, yes, I agree that the below would be ideal. That said, from my experience of being in the trenches for now, 7 years, I can comfortably say that recruiting full-timers is MUCH easier than part-timers. Part-timers have to me, seem only part-ly motivated to join, whether due to (1) they don’t want to spend $; (2) they’re so attached with their status quo of their home office; (3) their interest is so 50/50 fickle, any little thing can wane their interest. Also, if you were to spend, say, 1 hour per new part-timer member, between the tour, follow-up(s), onboarding…to yield $100, and your goal is 10 members, then you’ll spend 10 hours for those “sales”. If you were to spend, say, the same 1 hour per new full-timer to yield $300, then you’d only need to spend a little over 3 hours for those “sales”. The spread worsens if you seek $10k, or $20k. The very same many DIY/automated billing and other admin procedures you’ve focused to minimize, is being offset by exponentially more labor time to sell, or “cost of sales”. Is that the reason why exec suites probably only ‘rent’ full-time office spaces? Yes. Same efforts that yield way more $ revenue. Is there a better mix between the below strategy and exec suites? Yes. And that will depend upon how you operate, your demographics, your size space, etc. *JEROME CHANG* *WEST: Santa Monica* 1450 2nd Street (@Broadway) | Santa Monica CA 90401 ph: (310) 526-2255 *CENTRAL: Mid-Wilshire* 5405 Wilshire Blvd (2 blocks west of La Brea) | Los Angeles CA 90036 ph: (323) 330-9505 *EAST: Downtown* 529 S. Broadway, Suite 4000 (@Pershing Square) | Los Angeles CA 90013 ph: (213) 550-2235 http://www.yelp.com/biz/blankspaces-los-angeles https://twitter.com/BLANKSPACES
Re: [Coworking] My morbid curiosity with Coworking Space Closings
I think there's a great deal of truth here, and I'm really curious about other space's approaches to different membership levels (we're getting way off topic here, but whatever). I think Jerome is absolutely right that it's much harder to keep a part timer on board, probably due to their lack of commitment and the fact that they just by nature of their membership aren't around very much. At the same time, I also completely believe that a good community is a diverse community, and that includes an even distribution of people across different membership levels. Looking at our own membership levels (we have full time, 3 days/week, 1 day/week, 1 day/month), far and away the highest churn rates are in that 1 day/week level. 40% of all cancelations we've had are from that level. I'm not sure what—if anything—is to be done about it, but I'm curious what people have found useful in keeping people coming back who aren't coming every day. I like offering once-a-week memberships, because I really think everyone needs to get out of the house at least once a week, but it seems like that's the level at which people eventually forget about the coworking space and just drop off the face of the earth. On Friday, January 30, 2015 at 11:18:22 AM UTC-5, Jerome wrote: I think the below typically applies to smaller coworking spaces. Well, let me rephrase: the below is required for smaller spaces larger spaces does not need to follow the below rule; BUT, should they, yes, I agree that the below would be ideal. That said, from my experience of being in the trenches for now, 7 years, I can comfortably say that recruiting full-timers is MUCH easier than part-timers. Part-timers have to me, seem only part-ly motivated to join, whether due to (1) they don’t want to spend $; (2) they’re so attached with their status quo of their home office; (3) their interest is so 50/50 fickle, any little thing can wane their interest. Also, if you were to spend, say, 1 hour per new part-timer member, between the tour, follow-up(s), onboarding…to yield $100, and your goal is 10 members, then you’ll spend 10 hours for those “sales”. If you were to spend, say, the same 1 hour per new full-timer to yield $300, then you’d only need to spend a little over 3 hours for those “sales”. The spread worsens if you seek $10k, or $20k. The very same many DIY/automated billing and other admin procedures you’ve focused to minimize, is being offset by exponentially more labor time to sell, or “cost of sales”. Is that the reason why exec suites probably only ‘rent’ full-time office spaces? Yes. Same efforts that yield way more $ revenue. Is there a better mix between the below strategy and exec suites? Yes. And that will depend upon how you operate, your demographics, your size space, etc. *JEROME CHANG* *WEST: Santa Monica* 1450 2nd Street (@Broadway) | Santa Monica CA 90401 ph: (310) 526-2255 *CENTRAL: Mid-Wilshire* 5405 Wilshire Blvd (2 blocks west of La Brea) | Los Angeles CA 90036 ph: (323) 330-9505 *EAST: Downtown* 529 S. Broadway, Suite 4000 (@Pershing Square) | Los Angeles CA 90013 ph: (213) 550-2235 http://www.yelp.com/biz/blankspaces-los-angeles https://twitter.com/BLANKSPACES https://www.facebook.com/pages/BLANKSPACES/132257631339 https://www.facebook.com/pages/BLANKSPACES/132257631339 http://www.linkedin.com/company/blankspaces?trk=top_nav_home http://vimeo.com/blankspaces http://vimeo.com/blankspaces On Jan 30, 2015, at 6:11 AM, rachel young rac...@camaraderie.ca javascript: wrote: I'll add another item to Jonathan\s list: 4 - Less diversity. 100 members with a flex or part time membership is 3x as many different occupations, passions, life experiences, and hobbies than 35 members with a full time membership, so the mix of people that members interact with will be much less with full time people packed in, but you can cap the number of full time members and ensure there are more part time or flex to make that diversity even more apparent and effective. We have three membership levels: lite, part time, and full time. I always aim for a mix of approximately 30%, 50%, 20%, respectively, with no cap on daypass users or non-space usage memberships (virtual/non-space usage network membership only). r. *rachel young*rac...@camaraderie.ca javascript: *We're located at 2241 Dundas St W, 3rd floor* *(between Bloor and Roncesvalles)* *Chat with me *via 10KCoffees http://t.signaledue.com/e1t/c/5/f18dQhb0S7lC8dDMPbW2n0x6l2B9nMJW7t5XZs1qwymMW5wLM1s8rBvDjF51mVDt7mBxf5z9bGz03?t=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tenthousandcoffees.com%2Fprofile%2Frachel-youngsi=5437397447737344pi=86732968-f3b7-4c9d-93d9-049ee0b7d3d5 *Find us online:* Website/blog
Re: [Coworking] My morbid curiosity with Coworking Space Closings
About 2-3 years ago, we started noticing an entirely new cancellation reason showing up when people left Indy Hall. For 5+ years, the majority of the people who left did so because they were moving away, or because they took a job. Of course people left because it wasn’t the right fit for them, too, but the vast majority of the people who found us stayed. Then, people started saying something we hadn’t heard before: “I’m not using it enough”. Which sounds pretty similar to what I’m hearing from you guys. So….what changed so suddenly from the first 5 years to the most recent few? I had to talk to a lot of members, with a lot of focus on relatively new members as well as the folks who joined and left, but two VERY consistent patterns showed up: 1 - Prior to this new cancellation reason showing up, most people who joined found out about Indy Hall first – usually through our existing community members who told them “you’ve gotta join, this has helped me in so many ways... – and then once they got here they discovered that it was this thing called coworking. After the shift, we had more people first seeking this thing called “coworking, then finding us as an option, and choosing us. They’d heard about coworking in the newspapers, etc, and heard it was a cheap and flexible way to rent a desk. Those two categories of people had very different expectations of what the value of Indy Hall was. The problem is that while it might be easier to recruit this kind of person as a full time member: a) more full time members means that the culture starts to feel a LOT like a regular old office, which people who join are actively avoiding. (see this comment for just one example: http://www.reddit.com/r/CoWorking/comments/2udb90/why_did_you_leave_reasons_you_stopped_going_to_a/co7rv3k) b) from a purely financial perspective, a full time desk can only generate so much membership revenue. On average, a flex desk represents at LEAST 4x the revenue potential as a single full time desk ...in some coworking spaces I’ve worked with, that ratio is even higher. c) This kind of full time member (the one who comes in specifically to rent their own desk among other desks) tend to be more territorial than flex members. They contribute far less, and are inconvenienced by the smallest things. They’re just generally bad citizens. Once I realized that, we were able to tailor our tours and communication to the desk rental folks to help them see that yeah, there’s a place to work but the desk is barely scratching the surface of what they can get from their membership. We didn’t “correct” them, so much as showed them how to be better citizens, reminding them that yeah…this place was big but the way it ran most smoothly is when they were an active part of the community. Which actually led me to realize something a bit more subtle: 2 - Indy Hall had gotten BIG. When we were just a couple thousand square feet, it was easy to tell people that our community was the primary “feature”, not the workspace. But 5 years later, with multiple floors and a physically massive presence, I think that people had a harder time believing us when we said the same thing. And I don’t blame them! So we made some focused changes: We focused on new member education, especially during our tours and new member onboarding, to really helping people make smarter decisions about choosing a membership with us. (note: we’re still working on this today. we never stop working on this) We put more effort into developing our Tummling practice. We rebalanced our full time membership, which had grown to nearly 40% of our total membership, back to ~20%. We got even more intentional with our events, making sure that they weren’t simply “activities” but things that helped members build relationships. We did a lot of work with our online community, turning it into an equally vibrant gathering place as our workspace so that the members who weren’t physically in the room could still get value. Cuz here’s the mistake you make by letting yourself turn into a lazy landlord: you bind your business to your square footage and the number of desks you can fit. The only way to get past that ceiling is to add more space. And worse, you continue to reinforce the idea that the only way for people to get value from their coworking membership is to use a desk. If the only time your members derive value is when they park a computer at a desk in your space, I have bad news for you: you’re just renting desks. For the results of our work, some cold hard figures: - Our overall revenue grew in 2014 over 2013 by 49%. - Over 25% of our revenue comes from our Basic and Community memberships. - Those memberships are growing the fastest. Community membership, which includes ZERO coworking days, grew by nearly 20% in January alone.
Re: [Coworking] My morbid curiosity with Coworking Space Closings
Oh, by the way, the next episode of my podcast (http://dangerouslyawesome.com/on/coworking-weekly-podcast/ ) is going to have some really awesome SCIENCE to back all of this up. I had an amazing talk with the authors of this article: http://time.com/money/3586004/coworking-why-it-works/ They’re the first independent academic researchers to do a qualitative study specifically on what goes into the creating a sense of community, and why renting desks is a mirage. -- The #1 mistake in community building is doing it by yourself. Join the list: http://coworkingweekly.com Listen to the podcast: http://listen.coworkingweekly.com On Fri, Feb 6, 2015 at 7:50 PM, Alex Hillman dangerouslyawes...@gmail.com wrote: About 2-3 years ago, we started noticing an entirely new cancellation reason showing up when people left Indy Hall. For 5+ years, the majority of the people who left did so because they were moving away, or because they took a job. Of course people left because it wasn’t the right fit for them, too, but the vast majority of the people who found us stayed. Then, people started saying something we hadn’t heard before: “I’m not using it enough”. Which sounds pretty similar to what I’m hearing from you guys. So….what changed so suddenly from the first 5 years to the most recent few? I had to talk to a lot of members, with a lot of focus on relatively new members as well as the folks who joined and left, but two VERY consistent patterns showed up: 1 - Prior to this new cancellation reason showing up, most people who joined found out about Indy Hall first – usually through our existing community members who told them “you’ve gotta join, this has helped me in so many ways... – and then once they got here they discovered that it was this thing called coworking. After the shift, we had more people first seeking this thing called “coworking, then finding us as an option, and choosing us. They’d heard about coworking in the newspapers, etc, and heard it was a cheap and flexible way to rent a desk. Those two categories of people had very different expectations of what the value of Indy Hall was. The problem is that while it might be easier to recruit this kind of person as a full time member: a) more full time members means that the culture starts to feel a LOT like a regular old office, which people who join are actively avoiding. (see this comment for just one example: http://www.reddit.com/r/CoWorking/comments/2udb90/why_did_you_leave_reasons_you_stopped_going_to_a/co7rv3k) b) from a purely financial perspective, a full time desk can only generate so much membership revenue. On average, a flex desk represents at LEAST 4x the revenue potential as a single full time desk ...in some coworking spaces I’ve worked with, that ratio is even higher. c) This kind of full time member (the one who comes in specifically to rent their own desk among other desks) tend to be more territorial than flex members. They contribute far less, and are inconvenienced by the smallest things. They’re just generally bad citizens. Once I realized that, we were able to tailor our tours and communication to the desk rental folks to help them see that yeah, there’s a place to work but the desk is barely scratching the surface of what they can get from their membership. We didn’t “correct” them, so much as showed them how to be better citizens, reminding them that yeah…this place was big but the way it ran most smoothly is when they were an active part of the community. Which actually led me to realize something a bit more subtle: 2 - Indy Hall had gotten BIG. When we were just a couple thousand square feet, it was easy to tell people that our community was the primary “feature”, not the workspace. But 5 years later, with multiple floors and a physically massive presence, I think that people had a harder time believing us when we said the same thing. And I don’t blame them! So we made some focused changes: We focused on new member education, especially during our tours and new member onboarding, to really helping people make smarter decisions about choosing a membership with us. (note: we’re still working on this today. we never stop working on this) We put more effort into developing our Tummling practice. We rebalanced our full time membership, which had grown to nearly 40% of our total membership, back to ~20%. We got even more intentional with our events, making sure that they weren’t simply “activities” but things that helped members build relationships. We did a lot of work with our online community, turning it into an equally vibrant gathering place as our workspace so that the members who weren’t physically in the room could still get value. Cuz here’s the mistake you make by letting yourself turn into a lazy landlord: you bind your business to your square footage and the number
Re: [Coworking] My morbid curiosity with Coworking Space Closings
Our membership breakdown is pretty symmetrical: Full Time: 30% 3 day/week: 20% 1 day/week: 20% 1 day/month: 30% The skew comes in when you look at cancellations. Of our history of cancellations, they’ve come from: Full Time: 15% 3 day/week: 5% 1 day/week: 40% 1 day/month: 40% It’s worth noting that our overall churn rate is actually decent: 5% month-over-month average last year. But the pattern is still there: Weekly members stop coming around and either a) cancel or b) downgrade to monthly memberships, stick around for a while, then cancel. I’m curious if anybody else has seen this and what they’ve done to curtail it. -Original Message- From: Glen Ferguson g...@coworkfrederick.com Reply: coworking@googlegroups.com coworking@googlegroups.com Date: February 6, 2015 at 6:23:09 PM To: coworking@googlegroups.com coworking@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: [Coworking] My morbid curiosity with Coworking Space Closings * Looking at our own membership levels (we have full time, 3 days/week, 1 day/week, 1 day/month), far and away the highest churn rates are in that 1 day/week level. 40% of all cancelations we’ve had are from that level. * 1 day a week churns *more* than 1 day a month. That’s a pretty HUGE clue about what the problem is. I'm curious what percentage of your membership is on that 1 day/week plan. When we opened, we didn't have that level, but people wanted to join at that level, so we created it. We've consistently had between 40-50% of members on our 5 days/month level (it's easier to bill as days per month, and more flexible for the member). I'd expect the percentage of churn to reflect the percentage of membership, but now you're giving me homework to do this weekend and further break down my churn stats by membership tier to see if that holds true. --- Glen Ferguson Cowork Frederick 122 E Patrick St Frederick, MD 21701-5630 +1 (301) 732-5165 www.coworkfrederick.com @CoworkFrederick On Fri, Feb 6, 2015 at 4:58 PM, Alex Hillman wrote: * Looking at our own membership levels (we have full time, 3 days/week, 1 day/week, 1 day/month), far and away the highest churn rates are in that 1 day/week level. 40% of all cancelations we’ve had are from that level. * 1 day a week churns *more* than 1 day a month. That’s a pretty HUGE clue about what the problem is. -Alex -- *The #1 mistake in community building is doing it by yourself.* Join the list: http://coworkingweekly.com Listen to the podcast: http://listen.coworkingweekly.com On Fri, Feb 6, 2015 at 4:29 PM, Andy Soell wrote: I think there's a great deal of truth here, and I'm really curious about other space's approaches to different membership levels (we're getting way off topic here, but whatever). I think Jerome is absolutely right that it's much harder to keep a part timer on board, probably due to their lack of commitment and the fact that they just by nature of their membership aren't around very much. At the same time, I also completely believe that a good community is a diverse community, and that includes an even distribution of people across different membership levels. Looking at our own membership levels (we have full time, 3 days/week, 1 day/week, 1 day/month), far and away the highest churn rates are in that 1 day/week level. 40% of all cancelations we've had are from that level. I'm not sure what—if anything—is to be done about it, but I'm curious what people have found useful in keeping people coming back who aren't coming every day. I like offering once-a-week memberships, because I really think everyone needs to get out of the house at least once a week, but it seems like that's the level at which people eventually forget about the coworking space and just drop off the face of the earth. On Friday, January 30, 2015 at 11:18:22 AM UTC-5, Jerome wrote: I think the below typically applies to smaller coworking spaces. Well, let me rephrase: the below is required for smaller spaces larger spaces does not need to follow the below rule; BUT, should they, yes, I agree that the below would be ideal. That said, from my experience of being in the trenches for now, 7 years, I can comfortably say that recruiting full-timers is MUCH easier than part-timers. Part-timers have to me, seem only part-ly motivated to join, whether due to (1) they don’t want to spend $; (2) they’re so attached with their status quo of their home office; (3) their interest is so 50/50 fickle, any little thing can wane their interest. Also, if you were to spend, say, 1 hour per new part-timer member, between the tour, follow-up(s), onboarding…to yield $100, and your goal is 10 members, then you’ll spend 10 hours for those “sales”. If you were to spend, say, the same 1 hour per new full-timer to yield $300, then you’d only need to spend a little over 3 hours for those “sales”.
Re: [Coworking] My morbid curiosity with Coworking Space Closings
*We rebalanced our full time membership*, which had grown to nearly 40% of our total membership, back to ~20%. Has this happened naturally, or you imposed some kind of quota? -- Visit this forum on the web at http://discuss.coworking.com --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Coworking group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to coworking+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
[Coworking] Re: Infuriating article on the high premiums charged by coworking spaces in Bloomberg
Nick Clark of Common Desk in Dallas wrote a pretty good response exposing the poor math in this article: http://thecommondesk.com/blog/coworking-spaces-the-inexpensive-solution-for-a-cool-office On Wednesday, February 4, 2015 at 3:31:48 AM UTC-6, Will Bennis, Locus Workspace wrote: I have never been so pissed by an article on coworking: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-02-02/co-working-spaces-an-expensive-cure-for-loneliness Can't believe Bloomberg would publish this kind of financial analysis (treating the only cost of business as the lease cost). My ongoing struggle with running a coworking space has been with the fact that margins on memberships for the most part need to be lower than they should be to compete with spaces funded by grants, accelerators treating the space as a business cost for the hopeful investment payoff, big businesses using coworking spaces as mascots/advertising/sources of inspiration, or other spaces that are just operating at a loss because they underestimated the expenses involved in operating a space. Anyway, just putting this out there to promote some good old group resentment at the media. :) Anyone disagree and think Bloomberg got it right? Will -- Visit this forum on the web at http://discuss.coworking.com --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Coworking group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to coworking+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
