Mixer is the best present coworkers could make to celebrate the new space we’ve opened in Sonnenallee 67

Going Hybrid #1. Building a coworking co-owned by coworkers

We want to donate between 10 and 20% of our company shares to an association of long-term-coworkers. This association will be able to use the profit the company is making to fund whatever they agree.

We’re doing it because:

• Being hybrid. We’ve been building a community of coworkers that feels the ownership of a place, now that we’re a UG (German Small-Limited) we need a new tool.
• Local Impact. The coworking market out there is getting crazy and often disconnected from the neighbourhood. Since 95% of our coworkers are living in a round of 3 km from the coworking space, we want to enable them to do something for themselves as part of the neighbourhood and/or for the neighbourhood itself. What does it mean concretely? We don’t need to answer now: have one year to understand it together.
• Design for caring. We’ve been surprised day after day by how our community developed. Even if the community is slowly changing month by month, each member is caring of the others. We made it designing a space for it (Big kitchen! Plants everywhere!), keeping alive a tradition of cooking at the place and eating together, setting no laws but only responsibilities. Now we need to move to the next step.
• Communication of intangible. When I’m not travelling because of my work, I’m happy and relaxed to “go to the office”: Mitosis Coworking is part of my house, it is an alive contact point within my neighbourhood, it is a place where to meet friends before coworkers. It’s not only about the desk we give you, it’s more about how we make you feel. Today we need to claim it stronger.

Sepehr while he’s taking care of the space plants

We’re not in hurry, since we’re not going to have profit in 2018 we can take the time to:

1. Validate the desirability with the coworkers (do they want to be part of it?)
2. Validate the feasibility with tax experts (how UG/Gmbh can interact the best?)
3. Validate the sustainability in term of effort/result (I’m speaking about governance)

Step one: Validating the desirability

A picture from our last community dinner

We want to donate between 10 and 20% of our company shares to an association made by our long-term coworkers (let’s say the one who are members for at least 12 months in a row).

They’ll be able to invest the company dividendo in any activity they will choose to be important for the community: neighbourhood, freelancers, coworkers, they will decide which is the community they want to focus on.

Dear Mitosis coworkers of today and tomorrow, and dear Mitosis potential coworkers, are you interested to be part of it?

[Update: we’ve shared the draft of this post in our internal Facebook group and feedback by coworkers are positive. Next step will be a meeting to go deeper in it.]