Channelling Uber: Coworking in the Sharing Economy
Coworking is becoming the new normal. Across the globe, the number of shared office spaces has risen at a rate of 200% over the past five years–a trend that will only continue as the needs of modern business evolve. By 2020, the number of coworking members will rise to 3.8 million, increasing to 5.1 million by 2022. Meanwhile, 83% of coworking users claim to have benefited from working in these environments.
The appeal of coworking spaces doesn’t just extend to startups and entrepreneurs, either. The CBRE 2015/16 Americas Occupier Survey, which sought to get an overview of the business strategies and priorities of 226 Americas-based corporate real estate organisations, found that “more than 40% are using or are considering shared workplaces as a means to inject agility into their overall real estate strategies.”
It is flexibility and agility that attracts so many to coworking. Yes, other factors like price and potential collaboration with other tenants are appealing, but the best coworking services will offer a number of spaces in multiple locations. Flexibility is always cited as one of the key reasons people choose shared workspaces, and tenants value the ability to access spaces in key hubs as and when they want them.
This trend has led to the rise of coworking aggregators, sites like coworker.com which pull together a city’s coworking options based on location and length of membership — options range from daily to monthly. They act more as price comparison sites than facilitators of true flexibility, though, with users still having to sign up individually to each space they visit and committing to set periods of access.
Sites like Deskpass can claim to offer a genuinely game-changing service. The model offers access to over 175 shared workspaces in Chicago, New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Austin and Denver — some of the US’ most important hubs. Despite being limited to the US, Deskpass members know they can spend as little as a day in an office across any of these cities.
Though operating on monthly memberships, the company allows its customers to select the frequency with which they visit their spaces, ranging from as little as four visits per month to as frequent as 20. Interestingly, though, the most popular option is their ‘Part-time’ service, which allows for eight visits per month (and no more than five in each location). What this tells you is that not everyone needs a permanent desk in a fixed location and that the ability to dip in and out of office space when it suits is in demand.
There are a number of challenges holding back more companies from experimenting with offering this level of flexibility. Ultimately, it’s a logistical nightmare, with everything from high accounting costs to the difficulty of issuing membership/access cards on a one-use basis causing many to steer clear. Small coworking businesses generally won’t adopt this model, preferring to go down the more traditional route of having multiple businesses stationed permanently paying monthly or yearly rent.
This is where tokenisation comes in. At Primalbase, we have already tokenised access to our shared working spaces — anyone who owns one PBT can access any of our growing number of locations across the globe. What, then, if that token could be leased just as easily as you can order an Uber? What if users could be connected with token holders that are not currently using their tokens for ultimate flexibility and instant access to a nearby office space?
The potential benefits to this will be huge, and not just for the end user. For the person leasing the token, they can gain access to a beautiful office location in a major tech hub, with no ownership changing hands and the potential to find bargains given that token holders will set their own leasing rates. For the token holder, it means there is no downtime on their asset; their space is used even when they are elsewhere and they can earn money while doing so. For the others using the coworking space, it means that the office is always buzzing, filled with a changing collection of potential collaborators.
Tokenisation is one way of ensuring that the service remains entirely user-centric, for both token holders and those leasing. Just as, at its core, Uber benefits both car owners looking to utilise their asset to its maximum potential and those looking to lease a journey, Primalbase tokens provide just as straightforward a system. The most valuable asset for most people is time, meaning if complex leasing processes or extended waits for taxi cabs can be avoided, people will almost always do so. Primalbase is working to streamline the workspace rental process for those on both sides of the transaction.
Tokenisation also gives our users access to the benefits of blockchain technology. By hosting our tokens on blockchain, we can offer high security and efficiency for the digital asset. For us, the benefits are clear. The more useful and flexible our tokens become, the more membership will grow. In turn, this will mean that our offices become even more exciting places to work. At Primalbase, we are focused heavily on creating and providing for a community, and the influx of ideas and collaboration made possible with token leasing will help us do this.
