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Comment by lowglow | Hacker News Reader

I guess I don't understand why any startup would pay 300-500/per desk. While I'm building I look to cut all expenses across the board and leave only the bare minimum required to function and create effectively.

Can someone give an anecdote on when a shared workspace like this was beneficial to their startup's growth?

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We have a private office in the West Loop WeWork, because when we got it (just coming off the lease at our Oak Park office) I couldn't imagine working in a shared office.

Erin uses it, but I never do; I just stay in the coworking space downstairs. Generally people aren't very annoying (exception: enthusiastic dial-for-dollars recruiters taking loud phone calls), and the open space is a lot more comfortable.

It's like the good bits of working in a coffee shop with none of the bad bits.

As for the price: even with a private office, I felt like WeWork's pricing was competitive. I could have paid less for an office in Chicago, but it would be much less nice, and I'd have to lease it. Leases are especially painful in the early months of your company, because you have no visibility into how you're going to need space moving forward.

I'm not a WeWork booster. The place feels... let's say, "heavily subsidized by investors". I'm happy to take advantage.

I've used a coworking space in Tokyo for approximately 2 years, including my entire tenure at Starfighter. It costs approximately $350 per month. A++ would use a coworking space again. I have visited the WeWork office that Erin and Thomas work out of in Chicago, and it is better equipped than my office and has a variety of features which make it better for doing the kind of work that I'm routinely doing, including a) vastly more space per person, so that other people's conversations don't intrude into focused productivity time and b) closed offices with decent acoustics for calls.

Previously I did substantially all of my work from either my apartment or from cafes. Offices are better than apartments: you can bracket all time spent in them as "work" and then go home from work. Offices are better than cafes: it is expected that you will be working at an office, and you don't have to play a constant am-I-paying-enough-to-keep-my-table game with the cafe. Relevantly for Tokyo cafes, offices (even cramped offices) are substantially more spacious per seat than cafes are, have much better power/Internet situations, and often include printers and fax machines, for when you need a printer and/or fax machine.

What's your coworking spot of choice in tko?

This is, owing to some of the social peculiarities of work here, a "feel free to ask me privately" question. My email is trivially discoverable.

Working from home definitely has its own hardships. For me, its really messed with my sleep. When I worked from an office my most productive time was around 8am - 12pm. From home my post productive times are from 11pm - 3am. You can imagine some of the adverse effects this can have..

My first experience working in shared offices was at co-working spaces in Tokyo, Yokohama, Sendai, and Sapporo. I really liked working at coworking spaces in Japan. Once I came back to US, I tried several coworking spaces including WeWork. None came close to my experience in Japan. I rather work at home in US and at coworking spaces in Japan. Japan coworking spaces are very cost effective, flexible, facilities are top notch (specially internet speed), quiet, and you can be as social as you want or not. There are no gimmicks like beer on tap but some spaces held weekend/after-hour drinking and gaming (poker). I found US coworking spaces to be noisy and interrupting. Most have tenant agreements that run long (UW startup hall took the cake with 24+ pages) and basically ask you to sign your life away to them but they don't take any responsibility for anything.

To add to the other comment. There is a lot of flexibility in being able to go month to month. Not only desk count but location. Leasing a unit even a small office is a lot of hassle in silicon valley. Takes a chunk of capital and a lot of time to find a location.

Additional these places can be attractive for remote workers and freelancers. Its offers a community of individuals in same/similar industries. Clean bathrooms, usually basic amenities.

Edit: Just to add, I worked at a co-working place in downtown San Francisco. I think we spent maybe ~1 year there. Started with a couple desks, ended with maybe 8 desks and then we moved out. It gets expensive but it offers a level of flexibility that we found valuable at the time.

interesting, i couldn't see this scaling past 3-4 people. i figure the dedicated desk might be worth it, or at least space to get out of the house and network, but for 2500 5 people can probably do better even with flexible arrangements

Startups hate leases. If you have 10 people, it's often hard to say if you'll need 100 desks or 0 desks in two years.

Some people will swear that being around other people building things has value that is hard to quantify. Someone will reply with their anecdote about how, while working in a shared workspace environment, they met someone who became instrumental to their company's success. That's what I hear every time this conversation is had.

To me it sounds a bit like playing the networking lottery at a very high cost.

For me personally, I don't think it's hard to quantify at all. I'm absolutely terrible at being productive on my own, just having somebody to talk to that's working near me increases my productivity twofold.

Still, the price is really high. I certainly wouldn't be able to afford it if I was trying to bootstrap a new business.

WeWork does a lot of pretending about this, but it mostly takes the form of a social network web application. In the space itself, there definitely is not a norm of networking with the other randos at desks. The place has more of a library vibe than a makerspace vibe.

(I can only speak for the West Loop office, though).

I've been to both WeWork spaces in Austin (where I live) and the one downtown hosts a lot of events that I believe WeWork customers have priority at them (discount tickets and other things).

I've been a remote worker for the past ten years. When I started my company 4 years ago, we took a remote-first stance. As time marched on though and as we wanted to become more tightly connected to the entrepreneurial community in Portland, Oregon, it was a no-brainer to move into the WeWork / Customs House building. It has been good for our team and it has enabled us to be closer to our customers and prospective customers. If we just wanted cheaper square footage, I'm sure we could find it -- but in a less desirable location and not with the benefit of month-to-month terms and the quality of facility.

PS: If anybody else is Portland based, come by and have coffee with us ;-)

I pay $450 (converted) in one of their Tel Aviv locations for a single private office.

- Gets me out of the house, away from wife and kid, huge deal.

- The networking I don't use often but it IS a good option.

- The facilities are great, well staffed, clean, no complaints.

- I don't have to deal with anything for office upkeep.

- I can use other WeWorks all over the world, which are a lot these days.

As another poster said, who knows if I'll have 1 or 20 employees next year? Leases are impossible at this stage.

I would probably grow within WeWork around 8-10 employees before looking at other options. Yes, it's expensive per square meter but well worth it for flexibility.

There are plenty of benefits others have listed but here's a big one that could have a large financial payoff: networking. If you're working from home or a private office you're missing out on the huge networking potential a coworking space has. That network could result in sales, employees, funding, etc.

My London team is based in WeWork, Old Street (London). We have 10 memberships, of which 8 have dedicated desks. At £400 per desk it's not cheap, but definitely comparable to equivalents.

Beyond the physical space in a desirable location, the value for us comes from:

* Perks like free beer, free food (sometimes) social and professional events * Networking via their social network * A big, fun, creative space

The staff always seem busy to me and the place is really well kept. Happy customer.

Ditto...in London that explains the success of http://ministryofstartups.uk/

I worked at General Assembly when it first came on the scene and did coworking. There were two major benefits. 1) people corrupting there would regularly help each other out and often do business with each other. 2) When investors came by to visit one company they would often visit others just because they were there.

Because you want to be downtown for hiring/marketing purposes but not pay $60/sqft with a 5-10yr lease as opposed to $300-500 when you bring someone on. Eventually you may out grow it and need to get a lease somewhere, but it's extremely flexible while you're small and slowly ramping up staff.

It also helps with hiring in city. Not everyone wants to commute out of a city, and not every company wants to pay city rates for nice offices. WeWork is a compromise. You can hire people who want to stay in the city for a much lower cost.

Posh startups with other people's money. Money doesn't have meaning to them.

In our case, IP issues dictated for us to get off of university grounds. As anything you build can be claimed to belong to the school if developed on its property.

WeWork provided a good / cheap alternative for a small group of ppl.

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