[Founder] — John, Founder of tuesday coworking
How do you feel whenever you enter a coworking space? Are you feelings a mix of emotions from excitement to curiosity? That is a bit how we feel everytime we push the door of a new space. Those open environments are lively, busy, nicely designed and you feel like you can do pretty much anything from work to meeting someone new or even just relaxing. Have you ever wonder what it takes to open a coworking space? What does the road from the idea to the opening looks like? It is paved with so many challenges that no one sees. In our series of Founders portraits, we meet inspiring individuals from very various backgrounds, who have embarked at some point in their life in a journey leading them to open a coworking space. We sit down with them and discuss how they did it, the challenges they encounter and the good things it brings to them on a daily basis.
The first portrait is about John. From translator to founder of tuesday coworking in Berlin, John has experienced his own journey into the coworking world and we are glad he accepted to share some highlights with us. Scroll down to read the full story.
Hi John, thanks for giving us some of your time! We are here today to talk about you and tuesday coworking, the coworking space you founded in Berlin Schoeneberg. Can you please start by telling us when was the first time you ever heard about coworking?
That would have to be back in 2009 when Betahaus rocked into town. I was doing up my kitchen and needed somewhere quiet to translate while the workers were drilling and hammering. Unfortunately, it wasn’t much quieter at Betahaus :P
What made you decide to start your own and how did that happen?
A friend approached me about five years ago suggesting we open a coworking space in Berlin, but I wasn’t ready and I didn’t think Berlin was ready either. I was right about the former, but wrong about the latter. Still, it gave me time to do some travelling and experience coworking out of spaces in Africa. By the time I had translated one screw catalogue too many, I was ready to try something new. The idea had stayed in my head and I thought, fuck it!, I’m ready and Berlin’s definitely ready!
Schöneberg was where I lived first when I arrived in Berlin 15 years ago, so in a way I feel like I’ve come full circle. I was surprised to see so few spaces in an area that is actually quite well-to-do, for Berlin. And so, tuesday coworking was born.
What was your vision for tuesday coworking? Did it change since you opened?
My vision was to create a space for individuals like myself, where we could come and work alongside others in a quiet atmosphere. A place where you’re not constantly distracted by people talking on the phone (a real killer for translators). It was hard at the start to generate enough interest, so we had to take on a team who took over a room for themselves. That, in itself, kept us afloat, but was a real Debbie Downer for creating any kind of community feeling. So when their contract was up, we decided to switch to freelancers/individuals only, with teams of max. 2 people, and we haven’t looked back since. Our concept is working now and we just opened a second bigger space nearby!
You’ve been open for a few years now, how did you see coworking grow / change in Berlin? Do you think it’s different from when you started? If so, why?
I’ve seen a few spaces come and go since we opened. I don’t know if the idea: “Oh, I’ll open a coworking space, it’s easy!” is as widespread as it was. People may be realising that there’s a lot more work to it than just renting a space and filling it up with desks and chairs.
When it comes down to it, regardless of how good you might be at community building, growth is still a gradual thing, so you need quite a bit of money. If you’re starting from scratch, it may take months between opening your space and the time you’re covering your monthly costs. So you need money not just for the initial investment to kit out your space, but money to pay around six months’ rent.
The thing that’s changed the most, however, is Berlin rental prices. The last two years have seen rents explode. It’s hard to tell if it’s a bubble, but as a capital city, Berlin’s prices had always been lower than other European capitals. It’s not quite London or Paris, but it’s closing in fast.
What is your biggest challenge as a coworking owner? How do you overcome it?
As the owner and manager, the biggest challenge is finding time to check out. My last holiday was April of last year and when you’re running smaller spaces, any staff wages would just eat up your profits. That said, now that we’ve opened our second space, we finally have somewhere to put all those people we had on our waiting list and I can finally look into the option of possibly hiring some part-time staff.
What do you love the most about tuesday coworking?
There are two things really: I love how much work I get done. It really is night and day the difference between working from home and working at tuesday. The other thing is that it’s fantastic that I get to meet so many new people who are all doing different things. But the fact that I have a place to go to be productive that is separate from my home has made a huge difference. It’s infectious to be sitting beside people who are fully focussed on what they’re doing.
How would you describe your community?
It’s a nice international mélange of folks really. Since we don’t really have any teams (there’s no big group of programmers or anything like that), it’s mostly freelancers working in a variety of areas like journalism, mathematics, translation, NGO people, SEO people, CIA people… Well, maybe not the last… or… maybe, hm, how would we know???….. oh my God! mind = blown.
What is the ONE thing you would love to have in your coworking space?
ONE thing I’d love to have is something we’re about to get very soon actually, namely our separate room for Skyping — not a phone booth — but a side room with a couple of cabins you can plonk yourself into and phone or Skype away til the cows come home.
Complete the sentence and elaborate on your answer, “ For me, coworking is all about…”
…doing something more enjoyable with my life. Putting on events, meeting new people, making sure everything’s working right and having fun are all so much more fulfilling than sitting at home translating. Who would have thought that having fun is fulfilling, but there you go! :P
It’s taken a lot of work to get this far and it looks like everything will finally fall into place in the next few months, so it’s been hugely rewarding, it’s awakened an ambition for success in me I didn’t know I had and it’s changed my outlook entirely. Quite the impact!
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