Tag Archives: coworking

Welcome to N3rd Street

In early summer of 2007, Indy Hall wasn’t a place, but it was a nomadic tribe. We were moving from bar to cafe to restaurant to living room – anywhere with wifi – in the pursuit of a better working experience than working alone in our apartments.

At the time, Old City didn’t really jump to mind as the ideal place for us to settle. Compared to other neighborhoods, it was pricey. None of us lived in Old City. And on the weekends…well, the area attracted Philadelphia’s “bridge and tunnel” crowd.

But a few things drew us in.

For one, while none of us lived there, the 2nd Street subway station and the bus routes provided easy access to the neighborhood.

Second, one of the bar/restaurant spots we’d been frequenting was the geek friendly National Mechanics.

And third was the opportunity we found to rent this beautiful loft, and the lovely couple who took a chance letting us rent it to try out our “unorthodox” business model.

We Found Other Nerds on 3rd St

National Mechanics isn’t a geek-friendly spot by accident – it’s actually the “downstairs” of Weblinc, a quiet but powerful leader in the Philadelphia technology community and a supporter of everything from meetups, parties, and happy hours for groups of all sizes and flavors.

Weblinc provides their own enterprise-class eCommerce tools to companies that I’m sure you’ve heard of, and they employ some of the sharpest tech and business crew in Philadelphia. Jason and Darren Hill, the brothers who own National Mechanics and Weblinc, became quick friends and – for me personally – mentors, as they’ve been growing a tech business in Philly since the early 90′s

Just across the street from National/Weblinc, we found I-Site, another Philadelphia veteran web company. Founder Ian Cross doesn’t SOUND like a Philadelphian, since you’ll likely notice his british accent before you get too far into conversation with him, but Ian most certainly bleeds Philadelphia and has a lot of love for nerds of all kinds in this city. In addition to leading a successful creative/tech agency, Ian is active in many arts, culture, and civic circles across Philadelphia, always bringing his a-game.

There were other technology companies in Old City, of course, but these were the first two we found that not only had a critical mass of their own, but went out of their way to welcome and support other tech businesses coming into the neighborhood, and they both happened to be on 3rd street.

Head North, Young Man

We settled into the groove in Old City quickly. The easy access from anywhere in the city was a big attraction, but so was the bountiful lunch spots, the dozens of after-hours drink spots, and the close proximity to historic Philadelphian landmarks like the Liberty Bell and the other  Hall of Independence. Our members loved inviting their clients to Old City for meetings for these reasons and more.

It was also really great to be so close to the old city arts community – First Fridays provided endless people watching and opportunities to scope out the galleries latest shows.

When we started looking for a new location to grow into in early 2009, one of our members found a vacant floor in the Daniel Building. We showed the spot to our members and everyone agreed – this new spot north of Market street would bring us a myriad of improvements over our original office, not the least of which were a main street positioning over our Strawberry St “alley” location. The owners – Miles & Generalis, were supportive of what we were doing. They “got it”, and had a similar origin story themselves. M&G partners Tom and Alex are artists themselves, and identified strongly with our goals of bringing people together for creative and business endeavors. I think we brought a familiar identity to their building, and they’ve been supportive the whole way.

We joked that we didn’t think it would have been possible to move closer to National Mechanics, and yet – that’s exactly what we did.

We opened our new North 3rd St location – equidistant north of Market Street from National Mechanics/Weblinc’s building, in May 2009 and continued to grow and fill out our 2nd floor clubhouse.

Colonizing The Daniel Building

Indy Hall’s never been great for teams bigger than 2 or 3 – so when a couple of our members (one of whom lent us money for our move into the Daniel Building) began to quickly grow their company, they jumped on the opportunity to move and have space for their burgeoning team…up one floor in the Daniel Building.

Earlier that same year, Indy Hall friends and supporters Frank Roche and Sarah Chambers were looking to move their team at iFractal across town, and fell in love with an office… in the Daniel Building.

And as of this week, the growing Philadlephia contingent at Wildbit – decided to officially move to…the Daniel Building.

As of this week, Indy Hall & friends account for 36% of the 14 units in the Daniel Building.

Weblinc Expands North

Earlier this year, Weblinc bought and renovated another building on the stretch of 3rd street…right between the Daniel Building and market Street. This is after spending several months in temporary space…you guessed it…from our offices in the Daniel Building.

It doesn’t stop there

Continue north on 3rd street corridor and you’ll run into the Devnuts office, home to the John Fazio, Chris Alfano, and Matt Monahan’s Jarv.us and their unusual tech-talent bootcamp. I’d been watching them closely since they opened Devnuts, and it’s been really fantastic to watch them literally fill their North 3rd Street loft just across the street from Liberty Lands Park with some of the brightest young minds in Philadelphia and whip them into shape. Earlier this year, we joined forces to work on my newest adventure, DynamicWear.

Slash7 – Amy Hoy and Thomas Fuchs’ joint for producing their cheerful webapps like Freckle and Charm relocated to the neighborhood earlier this year – from Vienna, Austria. They just signed a lease on an office of their own just a couple of blocks away as their team has recently more than doubled in size.

And this is just a sampling of companies that I know well – DrinkPhilly’s office is at 3rd and Chestnut. Agency M and QuirkBooks are around the corner on Church Street. I’m sure I’m leaving somebody out – if we’re N3rd St Neighbors, say hello in the comments!

N3rd Street Only Goes One Way: Up

It was while hanging out with the Jarv.us/Devnuts crew that we realized that N. 3rd Street could easily be read as N3rd Street, the “leet” spelling of nerd.

It’s been really, really great to make N3rd Street our home over the last couple of years, and contribute to the gravity that is attracting more and more tech and creative companies to the neighborhood.

That’s really the difference though – it’s starting to feeling like a neighborhood. I don’t just love the area, I love our neighbors. I love seeing people I know on the street while I’m walking around, saying hello, and finding out what they’re up to.

Even better, though, is that it seems like all of the companies on N3rd Street are growing. It’s a great energy for all of us to be sharing in.

Things are good and only getting better on N3rd Street.

If you’re running a tech/creative company on or near N3rd Street, say hi in the comments! Thinking about moving to the neighborhood? Let me know if you have any questions!

Join the WeWorkInPhilly N3rd Street Group

Cuz, well, why not?

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The Coworkshop is Growing Up Fast

Just 2 weeks ago, I was worried. I’d been hit with a landslide of outreach from struggling coworking spaces. I’d put so much time into helping people start and run coworking spaces in a healthy and sustainable way, what had I done wrong?

Today, I’m much more hopeful.

It turns out that not everybody learns really well by subscribing to my blog, following my tweets, or asking questions on the google group.

There’s so much noise out there about coworking that it’s hard to find any signal about how coworking works when it works well, or how to even get to the point where coworking is happening at all.

So I decided to launch a course. With less than 2 weeks notice, I offered a 3 hour workshop where I’d share details, concepts and experiences that have helped us grow Indy Hall into an extremely healthy community and business.

Despite the short notice, the workshop sold out. I was floored.

I got some help from my veteran workshop friends Amy and Thomas on the tech side of things, and we were off to the races.

What the participants said

Even more gratifying, was the feedback I got both during and after the workshop:

“Not just a Coworking 101…more like 4-yr undergrad in Coworking Arts and Sciences.”

“…confirmed a lot of what I’ve been thinking and opened up a lot of things I hadn’t fully considered. It was time well spent for me.”

“…the combination of [Alex's] openness in sharing numbers, plus experiences – warts and all, plus letting people talk to each other and network, that had so much value.”

“I’m pretty sure you’ve saved me a lot of heartache and grunt-work!.”

“I wish I had the words to articulate Coworking in the way Alex does.”

“…a great guide to the pitfalls and potential of building a viable community of coworkers. And also a great explanation of what coworking actually is.”

“…the best resource I have found on what it takes to create a real, sustainable space. It took coworking out of the fad and made it legitimate.”

“..the best compiled resource for all levels of understanding about coworking, from the existing owner to the community member looking to start a space.”

And my personal favorite:

“I do NOT want a refund!”

So yeah. That’s good news. I didn’t screw it up.

The better news is that I got some great feedback about what was missing. So I’ve already put together another hour’s worth of content – cutting out some cruft and adding lots of new stuff.

I also got tired of saying “Coworking Workshop” and thanks to a suggestion from Jonathan Julian of the Shortmail crew, I’ve renamed the course to “The Coworkshop”. Easier to say. Less wasted Twitter characters.

So, it’s happening again

On Sunday, October 23rd from 1-5pm EST. It’ll be the same general format, just with even more valuable information.

A limited number of early bird tickets are on sale NOW for $250 through October 2nd, before the price goes up. So snap up a spot fast. Tickets are giftable, too, just drop me a line if you want to put somebody else in your place.

All of the details are over on the ticketing site, or you can jam out right away and pick up a ticket below:

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The Future of Coworking? What about the present? Or the past?

People are obsessed with “the future of coworking” but overwhelmingly aren’t taking the time to understand the present or the past.

"Trying to understand the future without understanding the past is like trying to plant cut flowers." -attr to David McCullough at #NCOC
September 15, 2011 11:47 am via Seesmic twhirlReplyRetweetFavorite
@pahlkadot
Jennifer Pahlka

Exactly.

Want to know more about the past or the present? Sign up for my workshop this weekend.

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Crafting Memberships

I’ll be covering this material and more during an upcoming coworking workshop. If this was helpful and you want to learn more, grab your ticket today.

In the summer of 2007, Geoff and I sat down to figure out a membership model for Indy Hall. There wasn’t a lot of prior art in coworking: the couple of models we had to reference were focused heavily on full time desk users and “anchor tenants”.

We’d been getting to know with our community, and we knew for certain that most of our community members did NOT need full time desks. In fact – we opened with only 2 full time members, and I was one of them.

On the contrary, we had a lot of people who wanted to be a member of the Indy Hall clubhouse but rarely needed a desk to work at. They were more interested in making sure that we could keep hosting events, and be a gathering place for people they enjoyed spending time with personally and professionally.

Rather than look at rental models, we looked at subscription models for membership. This is years before I was intimately familiar with the patterns and systems behind subscription business models, so I have a bit of retrospective analysis I can share here to help others come up with their own approaches.

Geoff and I looked a couple of places for inspiration. We have different backgrounds – very different backgrounds – so we had some pretty unique tools at our disposal.

An Artist and A Frat Boy walk into a bar…

Geoff brought his experience in arts collectives to the table. Many arts collectives had small fees for access to the gallery, supplemented by required volunteer time keeping the space open during openings, but this gave the artists access to the gallery for to show their work at least once in a period (quarterly, annually, depending on the size of the space and collective). They then had larger fees for studio space, if they offered studio space at all. They also had supporter memberships – low cost memberships for people who enjoyed attending openings but didn’t need art resources for themselves.

I had a different story. In college, I was a part of a fraternity. Less like this. More like this. Social skills aside, there were two levels of membership: in-house and out-of-house. In-house brothers paid a premium membership that included their bedroom. Out of house brothers had a lower per-term fee that helped keep in-house brothers’ rent down and pay for house maintenance. We all had access to the house, but were rarely ALL at the house at the same time. This meant that while our in-house brother count had a limit, our out-of-house brother count did not.

The two things that these models have in common is that they create a solution for the limitation of square footage imposed by a fraternity house, an art gallery, and hey…a coworking space!

Where do numbers come from?

So we ended up creating a full time membership for the 2 people who wanted full time desks. I was one of them, so I was an easy person to poll for how much I was willing to pay for a full time place to work. 4 years and a 3x larger space later, our full time membership is still $275.

We also decided on a basic membership. It’d be $25/month and include a drop-in day. We decided that it’d be good to make drop-in days and the basic membership the same price to make an upgrade a no-brainer to somebody who planned to return. Our conversion rate from drop-ins to at least basic members is extremely high, nearly 2:1 on average. Once we decided that drop in days and basic memberships would both be $25, “additional” member days became a discounted version of that price point, $15/day, giving basic members flexibility.

We had a few members that didn’t want a full time spot but planned to be in a few days a week. We decided together 3 would be the likely average, so a loose 12 days a month. We did some simple math: $25+ (12 x $15) = $205/month.

We felt that this was a bit too close to full time membership, and by dropping it to $175 we had a nice price point with a good pricing incentive to upgrade to lite membership if you’re coming in a few days a week but aren’t ready to go full time. It’s also not TOO far away from the full time membership that an eventual upgrade there is going to be painful on the wallet. Our lite membership was born at $175/month.

Bring a six-pack

We ran exclusively on these numbers and these numbers alone for 3 years. Our book keeper noticed that we had a growing number of basic members coming in around a half-dozen times a month – 1-2 times a week. To reduce recordkeeping and the potential for invoices getting missed, we crafted a “six pack”. This was simply a basic membership with 6 drop in days included instead of 1. No discounts. Just straight arithmetic. $25 + (5 x $15). This model also filled in the pricing gap between $25/month and $175 a month quite nicely. We don’t list this membership on our website yet, it’s been a bit of an ongoing experiment but has been a fairly popular basic member upgrade.

The importance of basic membership

Geoff and I agree that the basic membership is the most important “innovation” we’ve brought to coworking, from the perspective of making coworking able to be a sustainable business while being community focused.

The existence of a basic membership allows us to explain Indy Hall in a way that decouples membership from desk usage. Yes, you can use desks at Indy Hall and that’s a huge value. But it’s not the only value. Over 60% of our total membership are basic members (or 6 packs, which we consider a basic member derivative). 50% of those basic members never – and I mean NEVER - use desks.

But basic membership is also our fastest growing membership level. Basic membership lets us decouple our revenue from square footage. Some people pay the $25/month as an “association fee” to be a part of the club and have a channel to get to know the smartest, most interesting, creative people in Philadelphia. Others enjoy our chat room or our private forum. Others just like knowing what’s going on. Others only attend events. Others only organize events.

We’re also able to stay strong to our principals without having painful barriers. Our conference rooms are in demand. Sorry, they’re for members only. Want to sign up? You might find other things you’ll enjoy about Indy Hall. It starts at only $25/month. Want to attend Night Owls, our pilot program of evening working sessions? All it takes is a basic membership! This event is growing very fast as a hybrid productivity/social gathering, and every Wednesday being included in our basic membership has created a growth spurt large enough that we’re still deciding how to manage.

From a business perspective, this means that close to 40% of our revenue is generated by 60% of our members. Why is this important?

Sustainability.

It’s a core value. So its a part of our model.

Many coworking models depend on an anchor tenant or tenants to survive. These larger rentals subsidize things for the community. The issue is that every time one of these anchors leaves (which happens, which is okay), the coworking space scrambles to replace them. This is a distraction from the community.

Instead, our model puts our foundation – 40% of our revenue, enough to cover our rent expense – on a distributed platform of basic members. Not only does this foundation have less risk than one or two anchor tenants, but it’s also the part of the membership model with the most growth opportunity. We’re never trying to figure out “how to fit more full time desks because we need them in order to pay the bills!”, which is a common solution I see implemented with little success.

Current membership counts. You do the math.

  • 30 – Full Time
  • 18 – Lite
  • 9 – Six Pack
  • 79 – Basic

In the last year, we’ve fluxed between 30 and 35 full time members depending on the season.

We’ve kept our membership simple – this removes confusion about which membership might be for you. We also made them relative to desired participation. Of course, we’re also providing month-to-month agreements and you can upgrade or downgrade with 30 days notice.

“Flexible” memberships are only half of the equation. The memberships need to make sense for the members and the business. If they only make sense for members, the business will die. If they only make sense for the business, the members won’t be able to maintain their memberships.

I’ll be covering this material and more during an upcoming coworking workshop. If this was helpful and you want to learn more grab your ticket today.

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Starting Up

Joe Petrucci has taken a snapshot of the state of tech startups in Philly as this week’s feature on Flying Kite. He titles it an “underdog” story, an apt reference to a part of the Philly attitude that we know so well from our history.

I was a bit anxious prior to the release of this article, since I know I tend to be one of the few dissenting voices about “startups”, in Philly and in general. In the simplest of terms, I’m turned off by the common sense of privilege and entitlement in the media’s version of tech/startup communities, but worse, that people in those communities actually live like it’s true. I find it toxic, and don’t want anything to do with things that perpetuate that in Philadelphia. We deserve better.

To the contrary – I was quite pleased that this article was missing that tone, almost entirely. I enjoy the fact that it was headlined by a photo of four primary voices in the article who, while we have varied perspectives, are sitting around a table in the Indy Hall kitchen, smiling. The article reads with the honesty of a reality check without being too “up” or too “down”. My takeaway is, “things are changing, for the better, and ‘more of the same’ isn’t going to work anymore.”

That’s an attitude I can get behind.

Photo by Jeff Fusco

 

I also appreciated the strong overtones of “lets be a better Philly” instead of the usual “let’s be more like city X” that the media usually picks up on. In the Flying Kite piece, comparisons to other cities are limited to the fact that the growing pains Philly’s startup ecosystem are going to AREN’T unique to Philly – a fact which I believe to be completely true.

I believe that will be one of Philly’s biggest advantages over time, the thing that will help us outlast other cities: it’s ability to be itself, instead of trying to live up to being a competitor to Silicon Valley.

Some choice quotes:

“I think our identity should happen organically.” – Brad Oyler
“You need to have people at a common level that are comfortable with each other,” says McNeal of Startup Therapy, noting that as the area’s startup community has evolved, the need for more than basic happy-hour networking and base startup knowledge is evident.

Todd is talking about the need for Communities of Practice, rather than simply Communities of Interest. I expounded on this in Brian Glick’s recent blog post about Startup Therapy, with hopes of keeping them on the track to becoming a strong community of practice.

RJ Metrics, Cera says, is almost a “model citizen” in the local startup community.

I couldn’t agree more. The guys at RJ Metrics are sharp, motivated, and chose to be in Philly – moving into the city from Camden earlier this year. Among my favorite traits they exhibit that most other startups can’t seem to get – they’re quiet, except for when they have something meaningful to say.

RJ Metrics the kind of leading by example I want to see more of in the city I choose to call home. I’d take 100 more “RJ Metrics” type companies over a single “exit strategy” company making headlines anywhere in the nation.

Cera already has an idea for the startup community he is leading. “The best thing you can do is totally kick ass here.”

This is why I love Chris as a leader. He’s often reluctant, but he knows what he wants for the community he’s a part of.

I had a number of citations of my own quoted in the article, so I thought I’d share the Q&A I did over email with Petrucci for context and reference. Joe’s questions are in bold, my answers follow:

Q. What word(s) or phrase(s) would you use to describe Philly’s startup community?

I suppose that depends on which startup community you’re talking about. There isn’t just one.

There’s at least two styles of startup communities evolving in Philadelphia:

One version is a hyper connected community of interest, full of people who are passionate about the idea of startups but don’t have a lot of practical experience. They’re quick with rhetoric, read TechCrunch every day, and cheer whenever their “favorite startup” gets funded or acquired. I think this is more “scene” than “community”. This is endemic of most “startup” cultures you’ll find in cities across america, though. We’ve got one too, but that doesn’t make us special.

Another version is much smaller than the first. It’s populated by people who are in the early stages of building a business. That group is full of people sharing what they learn as they learn. They’re sharing practical experiences, problems and solutions. They recognize that Philly’s biggest missing asset isn’t funding, or talent, but a lack of mentors. They’re building communities of practice around early stage web-business creation to fill in that gap. If they’re lucky, they’ll become the future generation that Philly doesn’t have today, but that’s going to take some time. If this group pulls this off in a way that can last more than one generation, we’ll had a unique and valuable resource in our city.

At least one more version is much larger than the other two communities combined; mostly by nature of the fact that while it’s not self-aware enough to be a “community” by most measures, there’s an ecosystem of people starting new businesses in Philadelphia. They’re driven by pure entrepreneurship, the kind that doesn’t know any other option. These people are the most exciting to me because they’re both kinetic and potential energy. These people are building businesses because they want to, they need to, and they’ve either explicitly chosen to do it in Philly or they can’t think of a good reason to leave. They’re already in motion, not waiting for anybody. But there’s still potential energy because they haven’t yet realized that they aren’t alone.

Q. Do you still feel as strongly — like in your early July blog post “The funding ecosystem in Philadelphia: The empty can rattles the loudest” — that incentivizing startups coming/staying in Philly is not a good idea?

Its not so much that I think it’s a bad idea, it’s that I think we deserve better than the kinds of people/companies this attracts.

Q. What traits/practices have you found among Philly’s most successful bootstrappers?

  • “Philly”, as a brand or an attitude, is a part of why/how they do what they do
  • View constraints as benefits, not weaknesses
  • Honest/authentic expectations of themselves and others
  • They are unwilling to settle for status quo
  • They have strong mentors. They have at least one local mentor
  • They are involved in more than just the industry they are bootstrapping. Civic engagement, arts involvement, some creative endeavor.
  • They’re willing to let go of things, or transition them to new leadership.

Q. What supports are needed for those businesses and organizations in Philly that have already “proven their will to live against the odds … without begging”? Who should provide them?

My stock answer has always been: stay the fuck out of their way. I still think that’s the best answer.

The second best answer is to ask them. And don’t take their first answer as their only answer.

Q. How is what you’re working on contributing to the growth and/or potential of the Philadelphia-based startup community?

I think we’ve gotten to a point where we’re a both a place and a group of people that people can find comfort and support in trying to accomplish things on their own. We’ve never been a “services” business, we’re more like a community of practitioners where:

  1. You can learn about things you didn’t even know were possible.
  2. You can discover interests and skills you never knew you had.
  3. You can rest assured that you’re not alone, and there’s always somebody who’s done the thing you’re about to do. All you have to do is ask for help.
  4. You can be honest with yourself and the people around you.

The biggest thing for me, very personally, and I’m 100% certain that has led many people down a path of blazing their own trail is the comfort in knowing that you’re not alone in the way you think, the way you want to act, the things you want to do. Simply knowing that good, honest, hardworking people like you are doing this thing every day is inspiration enough for many people to leap into their own great unknown potential.

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