5 years in, included.co’s mission is still as audacious (and important) as ever.
Today the little startup I conceptualised in Cyprus, launched from the UK and now lead globally from the US turns 5.
(This article first appeared on my personal blog, check that out for more thoughts and lessons learned from deep inside the coworking, proptech and freelance sectors.)
included.co delivers business perks right onto the desks (and into the pockets) of members of 545 multi-business communities. In this post I dive into my long-term vision for included, it’s infrastructure so far and our potential to positively impact millions of lives.
Let’s start with our audacious mission statement.
At included.co, we believe that by truly democratizing access to business-supporting solutions, entrepreneurship will improve millions more lives around the globe.
“Which is great, but what does that actually mean?”, I can hear you thinking.
(Well I can’t actually hear your thoughts, but I did feel your eyes roll back in their sockets, a little. OK, a lot.)
What our mission means in simplest terms is this…
If we get everything right, people who are building important local or global businesses will never have to have to leave their local communities in order to get access to the products, services and pricing that will really enable them to grow their businesses sustainably.
In turn, these businesses would support their local economies, create jobs, up-skill passionate locals and in turn create and sustain even more local businesses.
I totally understand the immense challenge we’ve set ourselves and are truly grateful for the community operators, solution providers and ambassadors who continue to work with and entrust us to implement the world’s first global perk infrastructure.
“Why perks though?”, you may have thought again.
(See, it’s like magic.)
In order to implement the foundations that would enable us to build towards achieving our audacious goal, we needed to build a mechanism that would reward all of our stakeholders; our community partners, their members and the business solution providers.
As of today, 545 community operators have signed up to included.co, giving their members access to discounted services and products on-demand, regardless of where in the world they are based, or the number of members within their immediate local community.
The communities benefit from being able to offer valuable business perks, their members benefit from larger discounts, and the vendors benefit from unprecedentedly efficient distribution.
“But what about non-coworking communities though!?”, is probably not what you’re thinking.
(But it’s a great question so I’ll answer it for you.)
Over the last 18 months we’ve begun providing our perks platform to both coworking alliances (sort of business associations for the operators of coworking spaces) and virtual freelance communities, building upon the powerful networks we’ve built within and inbetween participating coworking spaces.
As we learn from these pilot programmes, and invite more new partners to leverage the platform, we are excited to be reaching more and more businesses who may not have access to a physical community just yet.
So in short, whilst we’ve definitely got our work cut out for us, we are continuously inspired by the amazing people, organizations and businesses who continue to step up to help us build something completely new, important and quite honestly… audacious.
