Launch into Coworking
Unless you were hiding under a rock with absolutely no internet access, you would have heard of coworking spaces sprouting up all over our most liveable startup city. Yes, they are everywhere. It’s said that in Melbourne alone, there are over 140 coworking spaces.
While many of the established venues are bursting at the seams with no room for anymore desks, new spaces are opening all over the CBD and suburbs to meet the demand.
Successful coworking spaces are much more than desks, wifi and latte. It’s about Community. But building community takes time… and a lot of hard work ~ like events, education & encouragement.
This month our Melbourne Silicon Beach community will sail past the 10,000 member milestone. We are 9,970 Silicon Beachers as I type these words.
Perhaps that’s the main reason astute Community Managers from some of these coworking spaces are reaching out to us. We have had several generous offers to host free coworking days for our community. What a brilliant idea! Connecting with an already established community, while building theirs. That’s what you call a win-win.
We even had a request from Local Government – yes, a suburban city council requested we hold events in their city to kickstart startup activity there. I’ll be meeting with them next week. Watch our meetup page for events in a suburb far far away from the CBD 😀
So what the heck is coworking? How can it help you in your startup journey?
As a long time fan of coworking, I can go on and on, and bore you to death, explaining all the benefits of coworking, but I’ll spare you the pain. Watch the video below and read the Medium post – they do a half decent job. Better still, come to one of our FREE coworking days and find out for yourself.
We plan to host at least one free coworking day each month over the next few months. Keep an eye on our meetup page and stay subscribed to organiser announcements.
First of many coworking days are happening this Wednesday 29th August at Sir Basil, one of our coworking partners. Sir Basil is a cafe/bar, with a coworking room ~ half way point between a cafe and a real purpose built coworking space. Perfect way to ease into coworking if you have been working out of cafes. We are starting the day with SiliconCoffee, our morning networking event, so you won’t be friendless during the day.
RSVP now before it gets booked out.
And the week after, we will follow that up with another FREE coworking day at CoWork Me, a brand new, purpose built coworking space in St Kilda. RSVP below –
“X” for Startups Events
It’s not all coworking. We will be jointly hosting a range of educational workshops in partnership with our coworking partners – what we call “X” for Startups. Where X could be anything of importance to our community. Topics being curated are SEO, Law, Digital Marketing, Sales, LinkedIn, Facebook Advertising, Pitching etc.
First such workshop is happening on the 11th September at WeWork Collins St. RSVP below –
Workshop presenters needed.
Do you have expertise, skill and experience in something that might be of value to our community? Do you think startup founders and those working with founders will find that knowledge useful? Does it align with our motto #EmpoweringFounders?
Then pitch a workshop to us. We may run it as a X for Startup event. Join us on Slack and pitch.
Event volunteers needed. Urgently.
We need volunteers living in all parts of our city who could step up as event hosts and helpers when needed. Ideal if you are looking at becoming a player in the growing events industry in Melbourne. No prior experience needed. Only a willingness to show up when required and work hard – an essential quality of anyone in the startup community!
Plus, you get the chance to attend some really cool events, absolutely free. Yes, that’s right. While many of our events will be free, the educational workshops and more value added workshops will be ticketed at a very reasonable price – not more than $25 in most cases. As an event volunteer, you get to learn some cool stuff absolutely free.
Join our Slack and tell us you want to volunteer.
Why are we doing all this? It’s our way of empowering YOU to be the best version of yourself. Our motto is #EmpoweringFounders. But as you know, it takes more than the founders to build a great startup eco-system. We are determined to support all those who support our founders to build great startups. It’s only then we can truly empower the founders.
Need some motivation? I’ll leave you with this hour long chat with Seth Godin, someone I consider to be a mentor. I have never met him and he doesn’t know me. But I have read his daily blog posts and all the books and must have watched all his talks on YouTube! At 38:00 minute mark he talks about exactly what we are doing right now in Silicon Beach.
See you somewhere on the Beach 🏖
