Seems bittersweet - excited to read part three about optimism
···
On Sun, Jul 30, 2017 at 7:54 AM, Will Bennis, Locus Workspace [email protected] wrote:
Just adding to this thread to announce another coworking space closing (Locus Workspace’s first location in Prague, Czech Republic). We’re not out of business, just consolidating from two to one space. And ultimately it was a great thing. But it was our first location and really a difficult choice to make. Anyway, here’s a blog post about the sadness that came with closing the space. Running that space was a really important part of my life, and much of it would not have been possible without the inspiration, ideas, and general good will that came from this group.
Best,
Will
On Monday, February 9, 2015 at 8:32:37 AM UTC+1, OphelieR wrote:
Thanks Andy for sharing these data. In our coworking the trend is a bit different.
The average churn rate is 5% on all our memberships except the full time coworking (different from resident/dedicated desk) which has a churn rate of 8%. We don’t have data around the main reason for living, it’s something we’re putting in place at the moment but basically if someone cancel from full time coworking it doesn’t necessarily mean they will upgrade to resident desk or downgrade to part time.
Moreover, the number of full time coworker is much lower compare to our resident members or part time coworkers. I was discussing this with another coworking space owner at the GCUC in Bali last week and they had a similar issues.
Is it something other coworking spaces are experiencing with full time coworker ? Does anyone have any explanation for this ?
On Wednesday, September 19, 2012 at 10:14:37 AM UTC+8, Alex Hillman wrote:
I’m sure I’m not the only person on this group who has google alerts set up for the words “coworking” and, sigh, “co-working”.
Between the number of new space announcements that show up in those alerts, Deskmag’s reporting on coworking growth trends, and many amazing success stories that we’ve all been privy to seeing unfold, there’s no doubt in any of our minds that coworking isn’t disappearing any time soon.
But speckled in the success stories are sadder ones. Coworking spaces who struggled and failed.
Another one hit my Google Reader tonight, in St Louis. Hence this email and this project being spurred right now.
On one hand, the business of coworking is susceptible to all of the rules of starting a new business - there’s going to be a failure rate. Not every business is meant to be. The rate at which I hear about closings is increasing, but it’s hard to tell if it’s growing in or out of proportion of openings.
Between coworking spaces that struggle to keep the lights on and coworking spaces that have closed (for good or bad reasons), there’s patterns in closures that I personally find very interesting, far more interesting in “new hotness variations” on the coworking models.
The pattern-watcher that I am, I see some things, but I need more information to start building a hypothesis that can be proven or disproven.
I can’t do this alone. If you’ve started and closed a coworking space, been a member of a coworking space that struggled and failed, or are simply a passionate observer who saw an unfortunate closing, please take a few minutes to help fill out this survey:
This information is personal and potentially sensitive. I don’t expect all of the replies to include names or all of the details. Many people on this list have shared their personal stories before, and we should all be thankful for that.
The best solution I could come up with is to choose how anonymous you would like to be.
1) The name and email address fields are optional and will ONLY be used to reconnect with the submitter for more information.
2) The final required question asks for your consent to share the data you enter, beside the optional name/email fields which are anonymous by default. In case you have an alternate preference, you can specify it in “other”.
There’s researchers on the list, so if there’s other fields that you think I should include (or better ways to collect the same data), I’m all ears.
**Even if you’re not aware of closings you can share about, I need help getting the word out about this project. **I’m hoping for some assistance from Steve King & Team Deskmag since I know this stuff is already on their radar. If there’s anyone else already studying this (all of the quiet grad students on this list, I’m looking at you), I’d love to share work reciprocally.
My goal is to organize this information and share some hypothesis that we all study together and share back again, overall helping the ecosystem not just learn from successes but also avoid repeating historic failure patterns.
My hope is to be buried under a mountain of responses and have to recruit some of you to help me dig myself out
Finally finished the final post in a long promised three part series about closing a branch of my coworking space.
It’s about the optimism that can come from scaling down, about overcoming the entrepreneur’s central challenge of transitioning from “working for your company to working on your company” (from maintaining your business to developing it), about the role of external context in work success, and a tribute to my father (who was a pioneer in leadership studies and who passed away in 2014).
Would love to hear others’ thoughts, as I think it has a lot to do with common challenges we all face, and not much to do with my particular coworking space!
···
On Tuesday, August 1, 2017 at 6:10:23 PM UTC+2, Alex Hillman wrote:
On Sun, Jul 30, 2017 at 7:54 AM, Will Bennis, Locus Workspace [email protected] wrote:
Just adding to this thread to announce another coworking space closing (Locus Workspace’s first location in Prague, Czech Republic). We’re not out of business, just consolidating from two to one space. And ultimately it was a great thing. But it was our first location and really a difficult choice to make. Anyway, here’s a blog post about the sadness that came with closing the space. Running that space was a really important part of my life, and much of it would not have been possible without the inspiration, ideas, and general good will that came from this group.
Best,
Will
On Monday, February 9, 2015 at 8:32:37 AM UTC+1, OphelieR wrote:
Thanks Andy for sharing these data. In our coworking the trend is a bit different.
The average churn rate is 5% on all our memberships except the full time coworking (different from resident/dedicated desk) which has a churn rate of 8%. We don’t have data around the main reason for living, it’s something we’re putting in place at the moment but basically if someone cancel from full time coworking it doesn’t necessarily mean they will upgrade to resident desk or downgrade to part time.
Moreover, the number of full time coworker is much lower compare to our resident members or part time coworkers. I was discussing this with another coworking space owner at the GCUC in Bali last week and they had a similar issues.
Is it something other coworking spaces are experiencing with full time coworker ? Does anyone have any explanation for this ?
On Wednesday, September 19, 2012 at 10:14:37 AM UTC+8, Alex Hillman wrote:
I’m sure I’m not the only person on this group who has google alerts set up for the words “coworking” and, sigh, “co-working”.
Between the number of new space announcements that show up in those alerts, Deskmag’s reporting on coworking growth trends, and many amazing success stories that we’ve all been privy to seeing unfold, there’s no doubt in any of our minds that coworking isn’t disappearing any time soon.
But speckled in the success stories are sadder ones. Coworking spaces who struggled and failed.
Another one hit my Google Reader tonight, in St Louis. Hence this email and this project being spurred right now.
On one hand, the business of coworking is susceptible to all of the rules of starting a new business - there’s going to be a failure rate. Not every business is meant to be. The rate at which I hear about closings is increasing, but it’s hard to tell if it’s growing in or out of proportion of openings.
Between coworking spaces that struggle to keep the lights on and coworking spaces that have closed (for good or bad reasons), there’s patterns in closures that I personally find very interesting, far more interesting in “new hotness variations” on the coworking models.
The pattern-watcher that I am, I see some things, but I need more information to start building a hypothesis that can be proven or disproven.
I can’t do this alone. If you’ve started and closed a coworking space, been a member of a coworking space that struggled and failed, or are simply a passionate observer who saw an unfortunate closing, please take a few minutes to help fill out this survey:
This information is personal and potentially sensitive. I don’t expect all of the replies to include names or all of the details. Many people on this list have shared their personal stories before, and we should all be thankful for that.
The best solution I could come up with is to choose how anonymous you would like to be.
1) The name and email address fields are optional and will ONLY be used to reconnect with the submitter for more information.
2) The final required question asks for your consent to share the data you enter, beside the optional name/email fields which are anonymous by default. In case you have an alternate preference, you can specify it in “other”.
There’s researchers on the list, so if there’s other fields that you think I should include (or better ways to collect the same data), I’m all ears.
**Even if you’re not aware of closings you can share about, I need help getting the word out about this project. **I’m hoping for some assistance from Steve King & Team Deskmag since I know this stuff is already on their radar. If there’s anyone else already studying this (all of the quiet grad students on this list, I’m looking at you), I’d love to share work reciprocally.
My goal is to organize this information and share some hypothesis that we all study together and share back again, overall helping the ecosystem not just learn from successes but also avoid repeating historic failure patterns.
My hope is to be buried under a mountain of responses and have to recruit some of you to help me dig myself out
Will: Excellent essay that I enjoyed on several levels. First, your father’s work had a major impact on my career. I was slugging it out climbing the corporate ladder in the late 80’s and 90’s. On Becoming a Leader and his other work greatly helped me shift from being a front line manager to an exec. In particular, his work made me understands the importance of developing and communicating what George Bush senior called “the vision thing”. I was also fortunate enough to hear your father speak several times. He was very inspiring.
Second, in our work advising startups we often find startup CEO’s and other execs struggle making the shift from working for the company to on the company. This is a very hard transition - especially for founders - and many fail because of their inability to do so.
And I also agree with your points on the importance of environment and its importance to independent workers.
Good luck with the new location.
Steve
···
On Saturday, February 10, 2018 at 5:42:37 AM UTC-8, Will Bennis, Locus Workspace wrote:
Finally finished the final post in a long promised three part series about closing a branch of my coworking space.
It’s about the optimism that can come from scaling down, about overcoming the entrepreneur’s central challenge of transitioning from “working for your company to working on your company” (from maintaining your business to developing it), about the role of external context in work success, and a tribute to my father (who was a pioneer in leadership studies and who passed away in 2014).
Would love to hear others’ thoughts, as I think it has a lot to do with common challenges we all face, and not much to do with my particular coworking space!
On Tuesday, August 1, 2017 at 6:10:23 PM UTC+2, Alex Hillman wrote:
On Sun, Jul 30, 2017 at 7:54 AM, Will Bennis, Locus Workspace [email protected] wrote:
Just adding to this thread to announce another coworking space closing (Locus Workspace’s first location in Prague, Czech Republic). We’re not out of business, just consolidating from two to one space. And ultimately it was a great thing. But it was our first location and really a difficult choice to make. Anyway, here’s a blog post about the sadness that came with closing the space. Running that space was a really important part of my life, and much of it would not have been possible without the inspiration, ideas, and general good will that came from this group.
Best,
Will
On Monday, February 9, 2015 at 8:32:37 AM UTC+1, OphelieR wrote:
Thanks Andy for sharing these data. In our coworking the trend is a bit different.
The average churn rate is 5% on all our memberships except the full time coworking (different from resident/dedicated desk) which has a churn rate of 8%. We don’t have data around the main reason for living, it’s something we’re putting in place at the moment but basically if someone cancel from full time coworking it doesn’t necessarily mean they will upgrade to resident desk or downgrade to part time.
Moreover, the number of full time coworker is much lower compare to our resident members or part time coworkers. I was discussing this with another coworking space owner at the GCUC in Bali last week and they had a similar issues.
Is it something other coworking spaces are experiencing with full time coworker ? Does anyone have any explanation for this ?
On Wednesday, September 19, 2012 at 10:14:37 AM UTC+8, Alex Hillman wrote:
I’m sure I’m not the only person on this group who has google alerts set up for the words “coworking” and, sigh, “co-working”.
Between the number of new space announcements that show up in those alerts, Deskmag’s reporting on coworking growth trends, and many amazing success stories that we’ve all been privy to seeing unfold, there’s no doubt in any of our minds that coworking isn’t disappearing any time soon.
But speckled in the success stories are sadder ones. Coworking spaces who struggled and failed.
Another one hit my Google Reader tonight, in St Louis. Hence this email and this project being spurred right now.
On one hand, the business of coworking is susceptible to all of the rules of starting a new business - there’s going to be a failure rate. Not every business is meant to be. The rate at which I hear about closings is increasing, but it’s hard to tell if it’s growing in or out of proportion of openings.
Between coworking spaces that struggle to keep the lights on and coworking spaces that have closed (for good or bad reasons), there’s patterns in closures that I personally find very interesting, far more interesting in “new hotness variations” on the coworking models.
The pattern-watcher that I am, I see some things, but I need more information to start building a hypothesis that can be proven or disproven.
I can’t do this alone. If you’ve started and closed a coworking space, been a member of a coworking space that struggled and failed, or are simply a passionate observer who saw an unfortunate closing, please take a few minutes to help fill out this survey:
This information is personal and potentially sensitive. I don’t expect all of the replies to include names or all of the details. Many people on this list have shared their personal stories before, and we should all be thankful for that.
The best solution I could come up with is to choose how anonymous you would like to be.
1) The name and email address fields are optional and will ONLY be used to reconnect with the submitter for more information.
2) The final required question asks for your consent to share the data you enter, beside the optional name/email fields which are anonymous by default. In case you have an alternate preference, you can specify it in “other”.
There’s researchers on the list, so if there’s other fields that you think I should include (or better ways to collect the same data), I’m all ears.
**Even if you’re not aware of closings you can share about, I need help getting the word out about this project. **I’m hoping for some assistance from Steve King & Team Deskmag since I know this stuff is already on their radar. If there’s anyone else already studying this (all of the quiet grad students on this list, I’m looking at you), I’d love to share work reciprocally.
My goal is to organize this information and share some hypothesis that we all study together and share back again, overall helping the ecosystem not just learn from successes but also avoid repeating historic failure patterns.
My hope is to be buried under a mountain of responses and have to recruit some of you to help me dig myself out
Thank you so much for this feedback, Steve. Really cool to hear about your influences and experiences with my father’s writing. He was actually sitting in the back of the room at a long-ago small coworking conference that you were at, I think the only time I met you in person (a meeting at Blankspaces in Santa Monica for coworking space owners who had been in business for a year or more, maybe in 2012 or so). He kind of just wanted to sneak in and see what his son was working on, but was truly inspired by the optimism and willingness to openly collaborate among a roomful of competitors. I know you’re in most many ways the same kind of observer, but thought you’d be interested to know.
···
On Sunday, February 11, 2018 at 6:38:59 PM UTC+1, Steve King wrote:
Will: Excellent essay that I enjoyed on several levels. First, your father’s work had a major impact on my career. I was slugging it out climbing the corporate ladder in the late 80’s and 90’s. On Becoming a Leader and his other work greatly helped me shift from being a front line manager to an exec. In particular, his work made me understands the importance of developing and communicating what George Bush senior called “the vision thing”. I was also fortunate enough to hear your father speak several times. He was very inspiring.
Second, in our work advising startups we often find startup CEO’s and other execs struggle making the shift from working for the company to on the company. This is a very hard transition - especially for founders - and many fail because of their inability to do so.
And I also agree with your points on the importance of environment and its importance to independent workers.
Good luck with the new location.
Steve
On Saturday, February 10, 2018 at 5:42:37 AM UTC-8, Will Bennis, Locus Workspace wrote:
Finally finished the final post in a long promised three part series about closing a branch of my coworking space.
It’s about the optimism that can come from scaling down, about overcoming the entrepreneur’s central challenge of transitioning from “working for your company to working on your company” (from maintaining your business to developing it), about the role of external context in work success, and a tribute to my father (who was a pioneer in leadership studies and who passed away in 2014).
Would love to hear others’ thoughts, as I think it has a lot to do with common challenges we all face, and not much to do with my particular coworking space!
On Tuesday, August 1, 2017 at 6:10:23 PM UTC+2, Alex Hillman wrote:
On Sun, Jul 30, 2017 at 7:54 AM, Will Bennis, Locus Workspace [email protected] wrote:
Just adding to this thread to announce another coworking space closing (Locus Workspace’s first location in Prague, Czech Republic). We’re not out of business, just consolidating from two to one space. And ultimately it was a great thing. But it was our first location and really a difficult choice to make. Anyway, here’s a blog post about the sadness that came with closing the space. Running that space was a really important part of my life, and much of it would not have been possible without the inspiration, ideas, and general good will that came from this group.
Best,
Will
On Monday, February 9, 2015 at 8:32:37 AM UTC+1, OphelieR wrote:
Thanks Andy for sharing these data. In our coworking the trend is a bit different.
The average churn rate is 5% on all our memberships except the full time coworking (different from resident/dedicated desk) which has a churn rate of 8%. We don’t have data around the main reason for living, it’s something we’re putting in place at the moment but basically if someone cancel from full time coworking it doesn’t necessarily mean they will upgrade to resident desk or downgrade to part time.
Moreover, the number of full time coworker is much lower compare to our resident members or part time coworkers. I was discussing this with another coworking space owner at the GCUC in Bali last week and they had a similar issues.
Is it something other coworking spaces are experiencing with full time coworker ? Does anyone have any explanation for this ?
On Wednesday, September 19, 2012 at 10:14:37 AM UTC+8, Alex Hillman wrote:
I’m sure I’m not the only person on this group who has google alerts set up for the words “coworking” and, sigh, “co-working”.
Between the number of new space announcements that show up in those alerts, Deskmag’s reporting on coworking growth trends, and many amazing success stories that we’ve all been privy to seeing unfold, there’s no doubt in any of our minds that coworking isn’t disappearing any time soon.
But speckled in the success stories are sadder ones. Coworking spaces who struggled and failed.
Another one hit my Google Reader tonight, in St Louis. Hence this email and this project being spurred right now.
On one hand, the business of coworking is susceptible to all of the rules of starting a new business - there’s going to be a failure rate. Not every business is meant to be. The rate at which I hear about closings is increasing, but it’s hard to tell if it’s growing in or out of proportion of openings.
Between coworking spaces that struggle to keep the lights on and coworking spaces that have closed (for good or bad reasons), there’s patterns in closures that I personally find very interesting, far more interesting in “new hotness variations” on the coworking models.
The pattern-watcher that I am, I see some things, but I need more information to start building a hypothesis that can be proven or disproven.
I can’t do this alone. If you’ve started and closed a coworking space, been a member of a coworking space that struggled and failed, or are simply a passionate observer who saw an unfortunate closing, please take a few minutes to help fill out this survey:
This information is personal and potentially sensitive. I don’t expect all of the replies to include names or all of the details. Many people on this list have shared their personal stories before, and we should all be thankful for that.
The best solution I could come up with is to choose how anonymous you would like to be.
1) The name and email address fields are optional and will ONLY be used to reconnect with the submitter for more information.
2) The final required question asks for your consent to share the data you enter, beside the optional name/email fields which are anonymous by default. In case you have an alternate preference, you can specify it in “other”.
There’s researchers on the list, so if there’s other fields that you think I should include (or better ways to collect the same data), I’m all ears.
**Even if you’re not aware of closings you can share about, I need help getting the word out about this project. **I’m hoping for some assistance from Steve King & Team Deskmag since I know this stuff is already on their radar. If there’s anyone else already studying this (all of the quiet grad students on this list, I’m looking at you), I’d love to share work reciprocally.
My goal is to organize this information and share some hypothesis that we all study together and share back again, overall helping the ecosystem not just learn from successes but also avoid repeating historic failure patterns.
My hope is to be buried under a mountain of responses and have to recruit some of you to help me dig myself out
I recall that Oct 2011 gathering at my space. It was truly collaborative, and a milestone in my eyes of coworking history. I never thought of the other participants as competitors as no one was even in the same geography, and even if so, the industry was growing so quickly.
Thank you Will for your honest revelation about closing your first location. I did the same last month after 10 years in our original Wilshire location, which I believe was the first in the SoCal/Southwestern US area. I agree that it’s hard to let go of the original, which I consider a prototype. Nonetheless, the memories of how we started, and how the photos were used in a lot of PR/press…are now just photos of memories.
I would say that closing that location didn’t exactly get me to work “on my business,” but I really don’t miss having either that location, or a 4th - not sure yet. That said, I’m a glutton for punishment and plan to open a downtown Long Beach location this Spring. Yikes. :-/
Maybe it’s time for another gathering of folks, not with 1 year experience, but 10+?
On Feb 11, 2018, at 11:36 PM, Will Bennis, Locus Workspace [email protected] wrote:
Thank you so much for this feedback, Steve. Really cool to hear about your influences and experiences with my father’s writing. He was actually sitting in the back of the room at a long-ago small coworking conference that you were at, I think the only time I met you in person (a meeting at Blankspaces in Santa Monica for coworking space owners who had been in business for a year or more, maybe in 2012 or so). He kind of just wanted to sneak in and see what his son was working on, but was truly inspired by the optimism and willingness to openly collaborate among a roomful of competitors. I know you’re in most many ways the same kind of observer, but thought you’d be interested to know.
On Sunday, February 11, 2018 at 6:38:59 PM UTC+1, Steve King wrote:
Will: Excellent essay that I enjoyed on several levels. First, your father’s work had a major impact on my career. I was slugging it out climbing the corporate ladder in the late 80’s and 90’s. On Becoming a Leader and his other work greatly helped me shift from being a front line manager to an exec. In particular, his work made me understands the importance of developing and communicating what George Bush senior called “the vision thing”. I was also fortunate enough to hear your father speak several times. He was very inspiring.
Second, in our work advising startups we often find startup CEO’s and other execs struggle making the shift from working for the company to on the company. This is a very hard transition - especially for founders - and many fail because of their inability to do so.
And I also agree with your points on the importance of environment and its importance to independent workers.
Good luck with the new location.
Steve
On Saturday, February 10, 2018 at 5:42:37 AM UTC-8, Will Bennis, Locus Workspace wrote:
Finally finished the final post in a long promised three part series about closing a branch of my coworking space.
It’s about the optimism that can come from scaling down, about overcoming the entrepreneur’s central challenge of transitioning from “working for your company to working on your company” (from maintaining your business to developing it), about the role of external context in work success, and a tribute to my father (who was a pioneer in leadership studies and who passed away in 2014).
Would love to hear others’ thoughts, as I think it has a lot to do with common challenges we all face, and not much to do with my particular coworking space!
On Tuesday, August 1, 2017 at 6:10:23 PM UTC+2, Alex Hillman wrote:
On Sun, Jul 30, 2017 at 7:54 AM, Will Bennis, Locus Workspace [email protected] wrote:
Just adding to this thread to announce another coworking space closing (Locus Workspace’s first location in Prague, Czech Republic). We’re not out of business, just consolidating from two to one space. And ultimately it was a great thing. But it was our first location and really a difficult choice to make. Anyway, here’s a blog post about the sadness that came with closing the space. Running that space was a really important part of my life, and much of it would not have been possible without the inspiration, ideas, and general good will that came from this group.
Best,
Will
On Monday, February 9, 2015 at 8:32:37 AM UTC+1, OphelieR wrote:
Thanks Andy for sharing these data. In our coworking the trend is a bit different.
The average churn rate is 5% on all our memberships except the full time coworking (different from resident/dedicated desk) which has a churn rate of 8%. We don’t have data around the main reason for living, it’s something we’re putting in place at the moment but basically if someone cancel from full time coworking it doesn’t necessarily mean they will upgrade to resident desk or downgrade to part time.
Moreover, the number of full time coworker is much lower compare to our resident members or part time coworkers. I was discussing this with another coworking space owner at the GCUC in Bali last week and they had a similar issues.
Is it something other coworking spaces are experiencing with full time coworker ? Does anyone have any explanation for this ?
On Wednesday, September 19, 2012 at 10:14:37 AM UTC+8, Alex Hillman wrote:
I’m sure I’m not the only person on this group who has google alerts set up for the words “coworking” and, sigh, “co-working”.
Between the number of new space announcements that show up in those alerts, Deskmag’s reporting on coworking growth trends, and many amazing success stories that we’ve all been privy to seeing unfold, there’s no doubt in any of our minds that coworking isn’t disappearing any time soon.
But speckled in the success stories are sadder ones. Coworking spaces who struggled and failed.
Another one hit my Google Reader tonight, in St Louis. Hence this email and this project being spurred right now.
On one hand, the business of coworking is susceptible to all of the rules of starting a new business - there’s going to be a failure rate. Not every business is meant to be. The rate at which I hear about closings is increasing, but it’s hard to tell if it’s growing in or out of proportion of openings.
Between coworking spaces that struggle to keep the lights on and coworking spaces that have closed (for good or bad reasons), there’s patterns in closures that I personally find very interesting, far more interesting in “new hotness variations” on the coworking models.
The pattern-watcher that I am, I see some things, but I need more information to start building a hypothesis that can be proven or disproven.
I can’t do this alone. If you’ve started and closed a coworking space, been a member of a coworking space that struggled and failed, or are simply a passionate observer who saw an unfortunate closing, please take a few minutes to help fill out this survey:
This information is personal and potentially sensitive. I don’t expect all of the replies to include names or all of the details. Many people on this list have shared their personal stories before, and we should all be thankful for that.
The best solution I could come up with is to choose how anonymous you would like to be.
1) The name and email address fields are optional and will ONLY be used to reconnect with the submitter for more information.
2) The final required question asks for your consent to share the data you enter, beside the optional name/email fields which are anonymous by default. In case you have an alternate preference, you can specify it in “other”.
There’s researchers on the list, so if there’s other fields that you think I should include (or better ways to collect the same data), I’m all ears.
**Even if you’re not aware of closings you can share about, I need help getting the word out about this project. **I’m hoping for some assistance from Steve King & Team Deskmag since I know this stuff is already on their radar. If there’s anyone else already studying this (all of the quiet grad students on this list, I’m looking at you), I’d love to share work reciprocally.
My goal is to organize this information and share some hypothesis that we all study together and share back again, overall helping the ecosystem not just learn from successes but also avoid repeating historic failure patterns.
My hope is to be buried under a mountain of responses and have to recruit some of you to help me dig myself out
It’s nice to hear that felt like a special event from others who have been around for a while. Definitely did for me, but I don’t make it to a lot of coworking owner/manager events.
I like the idea of a 10+ year event, but you’ll have to give me 2+ years.
···
On Monday, February 12, 2018 at 6:02:05 PM UTC+1, Jerome wrote:
Hi all.
I recall that Oct 2011 gathering at my space. It was truly collaborative, and a milestone in my eyes of coworking history. I never thought of the other participants as competitors as no one was even in the same geography, and even if so, the industry was growing so quickly.
Thank you Will for your honest revelation about closing your first location. I did the same last month after 10 years in our original Wilshire location, which I believe was the first in the SoCal/Southwestern US area. I agree that it’s hard to let go of the original, which I consider a prototype. Nonetheless, the memories of how we started, and how the photos were used in a lot of PR/press…are now just photos of memories.
I would say that closing that location didn’t exactly get me to work “on my business,” but I really don’t miss having either that location, or a 4th - not sure yet. That said, I’m a glutton for punishment and plan to open a downtown Long Beach location this Spring. Yikes. :-/
Maybe it’s time for another gathering of folks, not with 1 year experience, but 10+?
On Feb 11, 2018, at 11:36 PM, Will Bennis, Locus Workspace [email protected] wrote:
Thank you so much for this feedback, Steve. Really cool to hear about your influences and experiences with my father’s writing. He was actually sitting in the back of the room at a long-ago small coworking conference that you were at, I think the only time I met you in person (a meeting at Blankspaces in Santa Monica for coworking space owners who had been in business for a year or more, maybe in 2012 or so). He kind of just wanted to sneak in and see what his son was working on, but was truly inspired by the optimism and willingness to openly collaborate among a roomful of competitors. I know you’re in most many ways the same kind of observer, but thought you’d be interested to know.
On Sunday, February 11, 2018 at 6:38:59 PM UTC+1, Steve King wrote:
Will: Excellent essay that I enjoyed on several levels. First, your father’s work had a major impact on my career. I was slugging it out climbing the corporate ladder in the late 80’s and 90’s. On Becoming a Leader and his other work greatly helped me shift from being a front line manager to an exec. In particular, his work made me understands the importance of developing and communicating what George Bush senior called “the vision thing”. I was also fortunate enough to hear your father speak several times. He was very inspiring.
Second, in our work advising startups we often find startup CEO’s and other execs struggle making the shift from working for the company to on the company. This is a very hard transition - especially for founders - and many fail because of their inability to do so.
And I also agree with your points on the importance of environment and its importance to independent workers.
Good luck with the new location.
Steve
On Saturday, February 10, 2018 at 5:42:37 AM UTC-8, Will Bennis, Locus Workspace wrote:
Finally finished the final post in a long promised three part series about closing a branch of my coworking space.
It’s about the optimism that can come from scaling down, about overcoming the entrepreneur’s central challenge of transitioning from “working for your company to working on your company” (from maintaining your business to developing it), about the role of external context in work success, and a tribute to my father (who was a pioneer in leadership studies and who passed away in 2014).
Would love to hear others’ thoughts, as I think it has a lot to do with common challenges we all face, and not much to do with my particular coworking space!
On Tuesday, August 1, 2017 at 6:10:23 PM UTC+2, Alex Hillman wrote:
On Sun, Jul 30, 2017 at 7:54 AM, Will Bennis, Locus Workspace [email protected] wrote:
Just adding to this thread to announce another coworking space closing (Locus Workspace’s first location in Prague, Czech Republic). We’re not out of business, just consolidating from two to one space. And ultimately it was a great thing. But it was our first location and really a difficult choice to make. Anyway, here’s a blog post about the sadness that came with closing the space. Running that space was a really important part of my life, and much of it would not have been possible without the inspiration, ideas, and general good will that came from this group.
Best,
Will
On Monday, February 9, 2015 at 8:32:37 AM UTC+1, OphelieR wrote:
Thanks Andy for sharing these data. In our coworking the trend is a bit different.
The average churn rate is 5% on all our memberships except the full time coworking (different from resident/dedicated desk) which has a churn rate of 8%. We don’t have data around the main reason for living, it’s something we’re putting in place at the moment but basically if someone cancel from full time coworking it doesn’t necessarily mean they will upgrade to resident desk or downgrade to part time.
Moreover, the number of full time coworker is much lower compare to our resident members or part time coworkers. I was discussing this with another coworking space owner at the GCUC in Bali last week and they had a similar issues.
Is it something other coworking spaces are experiencing with full time coworker ? Does anyone have any explanation for this ?
On Wednesday, September 19, 2012 at 10:14:37 AM UTC+8, Alex Hillman wrote:
I’m sure I’m not the only person on this group who has google alerts set up for the words “coworking” and, sigh, “co-working”.
Between the number of new space announcements that show up in those alerts, Deskmag’s reporting on coworking growth trends, and many amazing success stories that we’ve all been privy to seeing unfold, there’s no doubt in any of our minds that coworking isn’t disappearing any time soon.
But speckled in the success stories are sadder ones. Coworking spaces who struggled and failed.
Another one hit my Google Reader tonight, in St Louis. Hence this email and this project being spurred right now.
On one hand, the business of coworking is susceptible to all of the rules of starting a new business - there’s going to be a failure rate. Not every business is meant to be. The rate at which I hear about closings is increasing, but it’s hard to tell if it’s growing in or out of proportion of openings.
Between coworking spaces that struggle to keep the lights on and coworking spaces that have closed (for good or bad reasons), there’s patterns in closures that I personally find very interesting, far more interesting in “new hotness variations” on the coworking models.
The pattern-watcher that I am, I see some things, but I need more information to start building a hypothesis that can be proven or disproven.
I can’t do this alone. If you’ve started and closed a coworking space, been a member of a coworking space that struggled and failed, or are simply a passionate observer who saw an unfortunate closing, please take a few minutes to help fill out this survey:
This information is personal and potentially sensitive. I don’t expect all of the replies to include names or all of the details. Many people on this list have shared their personal stories before, and we should all be thankful for that.
The best solution I could come up with is to choose how anonymous you would like to be.
1) The name and email address fields are optional and will ONLY be used to reconnect with the submitter for more information.
2) The final required question asks for your consent to share the data you enter, beside the optional name/email fields which are anonymous by default. In case you have an alternate preference, you can specify it in “other”.
There’s researchers on the list, so if there’s other fields that you think I should include (or better ways to collect the same data), I’m all ears.
**Even if you’re not aware of closings you can share about, I need help getting the word out about this project. **I’m hoping for some assistance from Steve King & Team Deskmag since I know this stuff is already on their radar. If there’s anyone else already studying this (all of the quiet grad students on this list, I’m looking at you), I’d love to share work reciprocally.
My goal is to organize this information and share some hypothesis that we all study together and share back again, overall helping the ecosystem not just learn from successes but also avoid repeating historic failure patterns.
My hope is to be buried under a mountain of responses and have to recruit some of you to help me dig myself out
On Feb 12, 2018, at 11:10 AM, Will Bennis, Locus Workspace [email protected] wrote:
Thanks for the feedback, Jerome.
It’s nice to hear that felt like a special event from others who have been around for a while. Definitely did for me, but I don’t make it to a lot of coworking owner/manager events.
I like the idea of a 10+ year event, but you’ll have to give me 2+ years.
On Monday, February 12, 2018 at 6:02:05 PM UTC+1, Jerome wrote:
Hi all.
I recall that Oct 2011 gathering at my space. It was truly collaborative, and a milestone in my eyes of coworking history. I never thought of the other participants as competitors as no one was even in the same geography, and even if so, the industry was growing so quickly.
Thank you Will for your honest revelation about closing your first location. I did the same last month after 10 years in our original Wilshire location, which I believe was the first in the SoCal/Southwestern US area. I agree that it’s hard to let go of the original, which I consider a prototype. Nonetheless, the memories of how we started, and how the photos were used in a lot of PR/press…are now just photos of memories.
I would say that closing that location didn’t exactly get me to work “on my business,” but I really don’t miss having either that location, or a 4th - not sure yet. That said, I’m a glutton for punishment and plan to open a downtown Long Beach location this Spring. Yikes. :-/
Maybe it’s time for another gathering of folks, not with 1 year experience, but 10+?
On Feb 11, 2018, at 11:36 PM, Will Bennis, Locus Workspace [email protected] wrote:
Thank you so much for this feedback, Steve. Really cool to hear about your influences and experiences with my father’s writing. He was actually sitting in the back of the room at a long-ago small coworking conference that you were at, I think the only time I met you in person (a meeting at Blankspaces in Santa Monica for coworking space owners who had been in business for a year or more, maybe in 2012 or so). He kind of just wanted to sneak in and see what his son was working on, but was truly inspired by the optimism and willingness to openly collaborate among a roomful of competitors. I know you’re in most many ways the same kind of observer, but thought you’d be interested to know.
On Sunday, February 11, 2018 at 6:38:59 PM UTC+1, Steve King wrote:
Will: Excellent essay that I enjoyed on several levels. First, your father’s work had a major impact on my career. I was slugging it out climbing the corporate ladder in the late 80’s and 90’s. On Becoming a Leader and his other work greatly helped me shift from being a front line manager to an exec. In particular, his work made me understands the importance of developing and communicating what George Bush senior called “the vision thing”. I was also fortunate enough to hear your father speak several times. He was very inspiring.
Second, in our work advising startups we often find startup CEO’s and other execs struggle making the shift from working for the company to on the company. This is a very hard transition - especially for founders - and many fail because of their inability to do so.
And I also agree with your points on the importance of environment and its importance to independent workers.
Good luck with the new location.
Steve
On Saturday, February 10, 2018 at 5:42:37 AM UTC-8, Will Bennis, Locus Workspace wrote:
Finally finished the final post in a long promised three part series about closing a branch of my coworking space.
It’s about the optimism that can come from scaling down, about overcoming the entrepreneur’s central challenge of transitioning from “working for your company to working on your company” (from maintaining your business to developing it), about the role of external context in work success, and a tribute to my father (who was a pioneer in leadership studies and who passed away in 2014).
Would love to hear others’ thoughts, as I think it has a lot to do with common challenges we all face, and not much to do with my particular coworking space!
On Tuesday, August 1, 2017 at 6:10:23 PM UTC+2, Alex Hillman wrote:
On Sun, Jul 30, 2017 at 7:54 AM, Will Bennis, Locus Workspace [email protected] wrote:
Just adding to this thread to announce another coworking space closing (Locus Workspace’s first location in Prague, Czech Republic). We’re not out of business, just consolidating from two to one space. And ultimately it was a great thing. But it was our first location and really a difficult choice to make. Anyway, here’s a blog post about the sadness that came with closing the space. Running that space was a really important part of my life, and much of it would not have been possible without the inspiration, ideas, and general good will that came from this group.
Best,
Will
On Monday, February 9, 2015 at 8:32:37 AM UTC+1, OphelieR wrote:
Thanks Andy for sharing these data. In our coworking the trend is a bit different.
The average churn rate is 5% on all our memberships except the full time coworking (different from resident/dedicated desk) which has a churn rate of 8%. We don’t have data around the main reason for living, it’s something we’re putting in place at the moment but basically if someone cancel from full time coworking it doesn’t necessarily mean they will upgrade to resident desk or downgrade to part time.
Moreover, the number of full time coworker is much lower compare to our resident members or part time coworkers. I was discussing this with another coworking space owner at the GCUC in Bali last week and they had a similar issues.
Is it something other coworking spaces are experiencing with full time coworker ? Does anyone have any explanation for this ?
On Wednesday, September 19, 2012 at 10:14:37 AM UTC+8, Alex Hillman wrote:
I’m sure I’m not the only person on this group who has google alerts set up for the words “coworking” and, sigh, “co-working”.
Between the number of new space announcements that show up in those alerts, Deskmag’s reporting on coworking growth trends, and many amazing success stories that we’ve all been privy to seeing unfold, there’s no doubt in any of our minds that coworking isn’t disappearing any time soon.
But speckled in the success stories are sadder ones. Coworking spaces who struggled and failed.
Another one hit my Google Reader tonight, in St Louis. Hence this email and this project being spurred right now.
On one hand, the business of coworking is susceptible to all of the rules of starting a new business - there’s going to be a failure rate. Not every business is meant to be. The rate at which I hear about closings is increasing, but it’s hard to tell if it’s growing in or out of proportion of openings.
Between coworking spaces that struggle to keep the lights on and coworking spaces that have closed (for good or bad reasons), there’s patterns in closures that I personally find very interesting, far more interesting in “new hotness variations” on the coworking models.
The pattern-watcher that I am, I see some things, but I need more information to start building a hypothesis that can be proven or disproven.
I can’t do this alone. If you’ve started and closed a coworking space, been a member of a coworking space that struggled and failed, or are simply a passionate observer who saw an unfortunate closing, please take a few minutes to help fill out this survey:
This information is personal and potentially sensitive. I don’t expect all of the replies to include names or all of the details. Many people on this list have shared their personal stories before, and we should all be thankful for that.
The best solution I could come up with is to choose how anonymous you would like to be.
1) The name and email address fields are optional and will ONLY be used to reconnect with the submitter for more information.
2) The final required question asks for your consent to share the data you enter, beside the optional name/email fields which are anonymous by default. In case you have an alternate preference, you can specify it in “other”.
There’s researchers on the list, so if there’s other fields that you think I should include (or better ways to collect the same data), I’m all ears.
**Even if you’re not aware of closings you can share about, I need help getting the word out about this project. **I’m hoping for some assistance from Steve King & Team Deskmag since I know this stuff is already on their radar. If there’s anyone else already studying this (all of the quiet grad students on this list, I’m looking at you), I’d love to share work reciprocally.
My goal is to organize this information and share some hypothesis that we all study together and share back again, overall helping the ecosystem not just learn from successes but also avoid repeating historic failure patterns.
My hope is to be buried under a mountain of responses and have to recruit some of you to help me dig myself out
On Feb 12, 2018, at 11:10 AM, Will Bennis, Locus Workspace [email protected] wrote:
Thanks for the feedback, Jerome.
It’s nice to hear that felt like a special event from others who have been around for a while. Definitely did for me, but I don’t make it to a lot of coworking owner/manager events.
I like the idea of a 10+ year event, but you’ll have to give me 2+ years.
On Monday, February 12, 2018 at 6:02:05 PM UTC+1, Jerome wrote:
Hi all.
I recall that Oct 2011 gathering at my space. It was truly collaborative, and a milestone in my eyes of coworking history. I never thought of the other participants as competitors as no one was even in the same geography, and even if so, the industry was growing so quickly.
Thank you Will for your honest revelation about closing your first location. I did the same last month after 10 years in our original Wilshire location, which I believe was the first in the SoCal/Southwestern US area. I agree that it’s hard to let go of the original, which I consider a prototype. Nonetheless, the memories of how we started, and how the photos were used in a lot of PR/press…are now just photos of memories.
I would say that closing that location didn’t exactly get me to work “on my business,” but I really don’t miss having either that location, or a 4th - not sure yet. That said, I’m a glutton for punishment and plan to open a downtown Long Beach location this Spring. Yikes. :-/
Maybe it’s time for another gathering of folks, not with 1 year experience, but 10+?
On Feb 11, 2018, at 11:36 PM, Will Bennis, Locus Workspace [email protected] wrote:
Thank you so much for this feedback, Steve. Really cool to hear about your influences and experiences with my father’s writing. He was actually sitting in the back of the room at a long-ago small coworking conference that you were at, I think the only time I met you in person (a meeting at Blankspaces in Santa Monica for coworking space owners who had been in business for a year or more, maybe in 2012 or so). He kind of just wanted to sneak in and see what his son was working on, but was truly inspired by the optimism and willingness to openly collaborate among a roomful of competitors. I know you’re in most many ways the same kind of observer, but thought you’d be interested to know.
On Sunday, February 11, 2018 at 6:38:59 PM UTC+1, Steve King wrote:
Will: Excellent essay that I enjoyed on several levels. First, your father’s work had a major impact on my career. I was slugging it out climbing the corporate ladder in the late 80’s and 90’s. On Becoming a Leader and his other work greatly helped me shift from being a front line manager to an exec. In particular, his work made me understands the importance of developing and communicating what George Bush senior called “the vision thing”. I was also fortunate enough to hear your father speak several times. He was very inspiring.
Second, in our work advising startups we often find startup CEO’s and other execs struggle making the shift from working for the company to on the company. This is a very hard transition - especially for founders - and many fail because of their inability to do so.
And I also agree with your points on the importance of environment and its importance to independent workers.
Good luck with the new location.
Steve
On Saturday, February 10, 2018 at 5:42:37 AM UTC-8, Will Bennis, Locus Workspace wrote:
Finally finished the final post in a long promised three part series about closing a branch of my coworking space.
It’s about the optimism that can come from scaling down, about overcoming the entrepreneur’s central challenge of transitioning from “working for your company to working on your company” (from maintaining your business to developing it), about the role of external context in work success, and a tribute to my father (who was a pioneer in leadership studies and who passed away in 2014).
Would love to hear others’ thoughts, as I think it has a lot to do with common challenges we all face, and not much to do with my particular coworking space!
On Tuesday, August 1, 2017 at 6:10:23 PM UTC+2, Alex Hillman wrote:
On Sun, Jul 30, 2017 at 7:54 AM, Will Bennis, Locus Workspace [email protected] wrote:
Just adding to this thread to announce another coworking space closing (Locus Workspace’s first location in Prague, Czech Republic). We’re not out of business, just consolidating from two to one space. And ultimately it was a great thing. But it was our first location and really a difficult choice to make. Anyway, here’s a blog post about the sadness that came with closing the space. Running that space was a really important part of my life, and much of it would not have been possible without the inspiration, ideas, and general good will that came from this group.
Best,
Will
On Monday, February 9, 2015 at 8:32:37 AM UTC+1, OphelieR wrote:
Thanks Andy for sharing these data. In our coworking the trend is a bit different.
The average churn rate is 5% on all our memberships except the full time coworking (different from resident/dedicated desk) which has a churn rate of 8%. We don’t have data around the main reason for living, it’s something we’re putting in place at the moment but basically if someone cancel from full time coworking it doesn’t necessarily mean they will upgrade to resident desk or downgrade to part time.
Moreover, the number of full time coworker is much lower compare to our resident members or part time coworkers. I was discussing this with another coworking space owner at the GCUC in Bali last week and they had a similar issues.
Is it something other coworking spaces are experiencing with full time coworker ? Does anyone have any explanation for this ?
On Wednesday, September 19, 2012 at 10:14:37 AM UTC+8, Alex Hillman wrote:
I’m sure I’m not the only person on this group who has google alerts set up for the words “coworking” and, sigh, “co-working”.
Between the number of new space announcements that show up in those alerts, Deskmag’s reporting on coworking growth trends, and many amazing success stories that we’ve all been privy to seeing unfold, there’s no doubt in any of our minds that coworking isn’t disappearing any time soon.
But speckled in the success stories are sadder ones. Coworking spaces who struggled and failed.
Another one hit my Google Reader tonight, in St Louis. Hence this email and this project being spurred right now.
On one hand, the business of coworking is susceptible to all of the rules of starting a new business - there’s going to be a failure rate. Not every business is meant to be. The rate at which I hear about closings is increasing, but it’s hard to tell if it’s growing in or out of proportion of openings.
Between coworking spaces that struggle to keep the lights on and coworking spaces that have closed (for good or bad reasons), there’s patterns in closures that I personally find very interesting, far more interesting in “new hotness variations” on the coworking models.
The pattern-watcher that I am, I see some things, but I need more information to start building a hypothesis that can be proven or disproven.
I can’t do this alone. If you’ve started and closed a coworking space, been a member of a coworking space that struggled and failed, or are simply a passionate observer who saw an unfortunate closing, please take a few minutes to help fill out this survey:
This information is personal and potentially sensitive. I don’t expect all of the replies to include names or all of the details. Many people on this list have shared their personal stories before, and we should all be thankful for that.
The best solution I could come up with is to choose how anonymous you would like to be.
1) The name and email address fields are optional and will ONLY be used to reconnect with the submitter for more information.
2) The final required question asks for your consent to share the data you enter, beside the optional name/email fields which are anonymous by default. In case you have an alternate preference, you can specify it in “other”.
There’s researchers on the list, so if there’s other fields that you think I should include (or better ways to collect the same data), I’m all ears.
**Even if you’re not aware of closings you can share about, I need help getting the word out about this project. **I’m hoping for some assistance from Steve King & Team Deskmag since I know this stuff is already on their radar. If there’s anyone else already studying this (all of the quiet grad students on this list, I’m looking at you), I’d love to share work reciprocally.
My goal is to organize this information and share some hypothesis that we all study together and share back again, overall helping the ecosystem not just learn from successes but also avoid repeating historic failure patterns.
My hope is to be buried under a mountain of responses and have to recruit some of you to help me dig myself out
