[Influencer] Tara Hunt and the early days of coworking
Read the story of the first female coworking co-owner.
Tara Hunt has one of the most impressive resume I have seen:
She is a LinkedIN Influencer, followed by over 152,000 people. Her Slideshare presentations have been viewed over 1.7 million times. She is in the top 5% of Twitter users worldwide with over 52,000 followers, and she produces a regular web series on YouTube called Truly Social which has almost 5,000 subscribers.
But that is not it. Tara is also one of the very first initiator of coworking. You can imagine our excitement when we got the chance to interview her to talk about coworking, how it all started as well as where it is heading.
How did you end up founding coworking with Brad Neuberg and Chris Messina?
This is the story…Chris Messina had found out about this project Brad Neuberg had been working on where he rented some space once a week in a local community center — Spiral Muse — and put the call out for other independents like him to pitch in and come work for the day. It was a great alternative to working from home or from a café. In his flyers he handed out (I think at Webzine 2005 first), he called it Coworking. Chris loved this idea and visited Brad’s Coworking day a few times.
Both of us were working at startups at the time, but started putting together meetups at Ritual Roasters in the Mission in San Francisco because we thought it would be even better to get a space full-time for independents. Chris involved Brad and asked if it was cool if we called it Coworking. Brad had already ended his project.
We put the call out for people to come together and were super excited because lots of people showed up. Within a few months, we co-rented a live/work space in Portrero Hill with a group of others (we called it Teh Hat Factory — not a typo).
A few months later, Chris and I both left our startups and decided to start our own company, which led us to looking for and renting a bigger, more professional space in SOMA. We called this Citizen Space. It opened in October 2006.
The best part was that, because everything we did was documented openly — on our blogs and Google Groups — we started getting interest from people around the world. Next thing we knew, we had hundreds, then thousands of people requesting to join the group and asking about opening their own spaces.
Now, it’s so big that most people don’t even know the origins. I read someone saying WeWork started Coworking! Though they have taken it mainstream, Coworking existed long before WeWork was even an inkling of an idea.
What has coworking brought to your life?
Coworking has created a worldwide network of like-minded, generous, amazing individuals who I can always reach out and connect with. Some of my dearest friends are people I met through that Google Group (it still exists, but I no longer receive notifications). Even though I’m now signing a lease on private office space, I will always carry the Coworking ethos with me. (up until the end of this year, my company has been working from a Coworking space in Toronto called District 28).
How do you see coworking evolving in the coming years?
You know…that’s an interesting question. There are so many evolutions, but having a growing business that just outgrew a Coworking space, I’d say an interesting evolution would be to turn every building into a sort of Coworking space. I will miss the cool community that we have at District 28 where I can head next door to my neighbor and ask questions and hang out together at lunch, learning new things. It leads to all sorts of cool collaborations. When you lease an office, there aren’t usually many common areas for the businesses around you to interact. It would be cool to see the ethos of Coworking spread to change that.
You are a social media expert and have accomplished amazing work in that field. What advice would you give to coworking spaces when using social media?
I’d say, you aren’t ‘renting space’, you are building a community. That’s what social media is for, too. Engage your community. Make it social.
Last question, what are your favorite coworking spaces at the moment?
If I have to — and I hate picking favorites — I’d have to say District 28 — I will miss our community there. But also, I will always love Indy Hall in Philadelphia, a Coworking space I’ve been a friend of since its inception.
Also, BLANKSPACES in Los Angeles. We worked out of there recently and I’ve known the founder, Jerome, for a long time. We also just visited a great little space in Santa Barbara called The Sandbox. It was fantastic!
What I love about Coworking is that every space has a unique flavour. I particular love the independent spaces (or smaller chains) as they feel more like communities than the big ones like WeWork.
Thank you Tara for your time ❤
Read more about Tara on her website
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