Share Your Office recently released the results of a survey of US coworking spaces. I had a chance to interview Connor Provines from Share Your Office today and came away very impressed by this work. It has lots of interesting data and is well worth reviewing by anyone in the coworking industry.
I thiought this was interesting: “Of all the places polled, it seemed on average that most coworking spaces hovered around 50% capacity. While no one wants to stuff their space so full of people that no one can move, this does mean that coworking spaces have room to grow. Studies in the past have suggested that demand for a seat in a coworking space outpaces the amount available, but of the 200 places polled, almost none reported that they were completely full.”
I have never been completely full in the sense this article seems to mean; at the point that we are at 50% consistently, I treat it as a call to start exploring the possibility of a bigger location or in some way to change the structure of the use of the space. You need 50% to be free to deal with the unexpected, or so I have found.
We were right at 50% earlier this year, when one of the webshop/retail coworkers had a massive growth spurt. Ultimately the went and got their own bricks and mortar shop in town, they had outgrown us.
I would like to be able to offer a real cradle to grave coworking option, but none of my cuirrent spaces are big enough for that. Some day.
But anyway, the idea is not to pack 'em in like sardines. My house is also used at less than 50% capacity most of the time, that’s not unusual either. 
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On Saturday, November 22, 2014 12:49:43 AM UTC+1, Steve King wrote:
Share Your Office recently released the results of a survey of US coworking spaces. I had a chance to interview Connor Provines from Share Your Office today and came away very impressed by this work. It has lots of interesting data and is well worth reviewing by anyone in the coworking industry.
This is fascinating. Most of the spaces I have talked to in Canada are closer to 75% full normally. It opens up a broader discussion about demand and how in most markets, there’s no way that supply has exceeded demand. I believe that the problem is awareness of coworking as a viable option for individuals and small businesses/non-profits. I’m thinking about doing some original research on this in a few key markets in North America. What do you guys think?
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On Wed, Nov 26, 2014 at 12:25 AM, Jeannine [email protected] wrote:
I thiought this was interesting: “Of all the places polled, it seemed on average that most coworking spaces hovered around 50% capacity. While no one wants to stuff their space so full of people that no one can move, this does mean that coworking spaces have room to grow. Studies in the past have suggested that demand for a seat in a coworking space outpaces the amount available, but of the 200 places polled, almost none reported that they were completely full.”
I have never been completely full in the sense this article seems to mean; at the point that we are at 50% consistently, I treat it as a call to start exploring the possibility of a bigger location or in some way to change the structure of the use of the space. You need 50% to be free to deal with the unexpected, or so I have found.
We were right at 50% earlier this year, when one of the webshop/retail coworkers had a massive growth spurt. Ultimately the went and got their own bricks and mortar shop in town, they had outgrown us.
I would like to be able to offer a real cradle to grave coworking option, but none of my cuirrent spaces are big enough for that. Some day.
But anyway, the idea is not to pack 'em in like sardines. My house is also used at less than 50% capacity most of the time, that’s not unusual either.
On Saturday, November 22, 2014 12:49:43 AM UTC+1, Steve King wrote:
Share Your Office recently released the results of a survey of US coworking spaces. I had a chance to interview Connor Provines from Share Your Office today and came away very impressed by this work. It has lots of interesting data and is well worth reviewing by anyone in the coworking industry.
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Aaron Cruikshank
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Hey everyone, I’m the individual behind the formation and execution of the U.S coworking survey - I love the interest surrounding it. If there are any questions regarding my methodology, or take-aways from the project I’d be happy to address them.
With regard to capacity and coworking: I believe that numerous coworking spaces share the mentality of Jeannine; when coworking spaces become too crowded they often become noisy and somewhat uncomfortable, however this is merely an average, we noticed that heavy coworking centers (SF, NYC, Boston, Denver, Houston) tended to sit around 65+% capacity, whereas smaller locations often sat within the 30-45% range. Also as a note maximum capacity was in no way weighted in forming this statistic, that is to say a coworking space with a maximum capacity of 15 had the same weight in this statistic as one with 700. We could break down the numbers further if the interest existed, along with regional metrics.
Also, thanks again Steve for the visibility in this, we’ve really appreciated your interest and help.
-Connor
Also @Aaron, I’ve spoken to several spaces in Canada, but that’s still a region that’s fairly unfamiliar to us, personally would love to have more information on those markets.
It may also have to do with the different coworking experience in urban versus rural coworking markets, or as you say in smaller spaces versus larger ones.
In a large or urban coworking space, there is in my experience more hotdesking, My general impression is that hotdesking is what a lot of people think coworking is, at its core.
But I almost never have hotdeskers at my space in Oosterhout (pop 50,000). Meetings, appointments, large groups. workshops, events, and regular solos with a dedicated desk I have a lot of. This means there is less hour-to-hour flux in capacity.
I’m a big fan of Jeannine’s theory here. Lots of data tends to skew to more urban coworking examples, and even worse, gets skewed further by outlier mega-cities (where density and demand for ANY space makes it very easy for a coworking space to appear more sustainable than it really is). There aren’t many cities in the world like New York, London, SF, and Sydney for example - so they’re VERY hard to draw conclusions from. New York and SF are especially insane*.* Whenever I visit or am working with someone in those cities, I’m constantly reminding myself that “this is not reality”.
Keeping that skew in mind is really, really important when trying to draw understanding from these kinds of datasets.
-Alex
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On Wed, Dec 3, 2014 at 4:44 AM, Jeannine [email protected] wrote:
It may also have to do with the different coworking experience in urban versus rural coworking markets, or as you say in smaller spaces versus larger ones.
In a large or urban coworking space, there is in my experience more hotdesking, My general impression is that hotdesking is what a lot of people think coworking is, at its core.
But I almost never have hotdeskers at my space in Oosterhout (pop 50,000). Meetings, appointments, large groups. workshops, events, and regular solos with a dedicated desk I have a lot of. This means there is less hour-to-hour flux in capacity.
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Actually, while I agree that mega-coworking spaces do obviously skew the results, we do have to take into consideration the fact that the majority (At least in the U.S) of coworking spaces are in fact located in cities. If you’re to take the top 10 coworking cities, NYC, SF, Houston, Los Angeles, Denver, Boulder, Boston, Seattle, Phoenix, Portland you’ve accounted for roughly 50% of the coworking spaces in the United States, with another 20 cities or so accounting for another 30% of total U.S coworking spaces.
We find that in smaller cities we have a spread of makers spaces, or small coworking spaces, but they account for a very, very small percentage of total spaces. I can’t speak heavily to hot desks, but I can confirm that in these major cities “hot desk” coworking is rather uncommon, with most spaces only dedicating a few seats daily to hot desks. Generally these places switch to “sub-memberships” (1-3 days a week) instead of hot desks.
I guess the take-away is that as Alex said, coworking in smaller areas can be very difficult to sustain, however I would argue that those mega-cities are in fact the norm, not the exception, and perhaps these are the areas best suited for coworking, where there is an incredibly high intersection between property value and density of workers.
When I’m referring to hot-desks, I’m not actually talking about what the coworking space calls it…I’m actually talking about the “come in and use a desk” members compared to the “participate and get connected to the community” members.
“coworking in smaller areas can be very difficult to sustain”
I never said that. Correlation is not causation.
> “…where there is an incredibly high intersection between property value and density of workers.”
People crave a sense of belonging everywhere. If people only join your coworking space when they need a desk to work, that’s a much bigger clue about your sustainability than the intersection of property value and density.
-Alex
···
The #1 mistake in community building is doing it by yourself.
Join the list: http://coworkingweekly.com
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On Thu, Dec 4, 2014 at 1:59 PM, Connor Provines [email protected] wrote:
Actually, while I agree that mega-coworking spaces do obviously skew the results, we do have to take into consideration the fact that the majority (At least in the U.S) of coworking spaces are in fact located in cities. If you’re to take the top 10 coworking cities, NYC, SF, Houston, Los Angeles, Denver, Boulder, Boston, Seattle, Phoenix, Portland you’ve accounted for roughly 50% of the coworking spaces in the United States, with another 20 cities or so accounting for another 30% of total U.S coworking spaces.
We find that in smaller cities we have a spread of makers spaces, or small coworking spaces, but they account for a very, very small percentage of total spaces. I can’t speak heavily to hot desks, but I can confirm that in these major cities “hot desk” coworking is rather uncommon, with most spaces only dedicating a few seats daily to hot desks. Generally these places switch to “sub-memberships” (1-3 days a week) instead of hot desks.
I guess the take-away is that as Alex said, coworking in smaller areas can be very difficult to sustain, however I would argue that those mega-cities are in fact the norm, not the exception, and perhaps these are the areas best suited for coworking, where there is an incredibly high intersection between property value and density of workers.
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