Meet the Techspace Team — Community Manager Amanda
This week, we took a tour of the brand new Techspace Shoreditch on Luke Street, which opens its doors next week.
We strolled through the light corridors, admiring the stylish armchairs and geometric lamps that have been carefully selected for the 20,000 square foot space.
“This will be the heart of Techspace”, our Community Manager Amanda Neanor proudly states. Of course, this isn’t the first time Amanda has shown a team around the new state of the art office space. Every week she is meeting fast-growing tech founders who are looking for flexible, affordable solutions for their companies.
We wanted to find out a bit more about Amanda, and what she does here at Techspace, so we ducked into a fancy new meeting room to have a chat.
Tell us how you came to be living in London?
Well, I’m from a small crabbing village on the tip of the Chesapeake Bay in North East Maryland. After a backpacking trip around Western Europe I knew I wanted to live abroad. At the time I was 19 and I had heard from a friend studying in Beijing about a high demand for native English-speaking teachers there so I spent all my savings on a plane ticket and went out to find a job! There I met Michael, who is now my husband. Together we travelled around South East Asia, and then did a working holiday in New Zealand for a year which was killer. After we got engaged we decided to come here as Michael is from the UK and has family here. We were both used to living in a city so we knew we had to live in London.
What attracted you to working at Techspace?
When I first moved to London I didn’t know what I wanted to do — I started as a cat sitter, and I embroidered for fun. I thought I could sell my work as a side hustle, so I went to a talk at Launchpad on branding and that was my first experience with co-working. I later found a job for a co-working provider in West London and fell in love with start-up culture and supporting people who are passionate about what they do. After my first interview with Techspace I could tell they shared that same love.
What do you find most tech business look for in good office space?
It totally depends on the business you are bringing on board. I like to ask a lot of questions to find out where their priorities lie.
How we interact with our members tends to be important to tech founders — we want to make sure it’s not just free events with free beer. Our members want events that are specific to their growth journey, and flexibility for sure because a lot of companies that join us do have serious plans to scale. We also offer flexibility in the event that things don’t go the way they planned and they need to scale down.
Location is another draw — as we’re right in the heart of the London tech scene. Some members are very budget driven, so we’re a good pick as we compromise being on the fringe of the City. Being close to Old Street and Liverpool Street are obviously key for our tech community.
What does a typical day look like at Techspace?
We’re currently building out the Community department so we’re still mapping out baseline policies and processes so later we can focus on engaging members through meaningful member-to-member and member-to-partner introductions, quality events and socials. What we do now looks very different to what we will be doing in the future.
We’re working on all of this whilst juggling day to day account management tasks like onboarding new members, negotiating contract renewals and addendums, building tours and helping members with upgrade and variation requests. Reporting is also a big part of our role. We’re responsible for feeding into all other departments in the business to make sure everyone has visibility on what’s happening across all 6 locations.
What part do you get the most buzz from?
I really enjoy helping companies figure out how they can grow with us. If they are moving from one location to another, it’s always an interesting challenge deciding how we can fit them into a floor plate and change the space to suit their needs. A bit like Tetris, it’s exciting when all the pieces of the puzzle fit into place!
Also, we’re really starting to tap into our community. We’re finding out where companies are, where they want to be and how we can help them get there by introducing members to partners and connecting them with others in the tech ecosystem.
I think it’s just as interesting that members are supporting each other in their buildings without our introductions too. I can see our members connecting on social media and mingling at socials, which is really useful.
What does the new Luke Street space bring to Techspace?
It’s definitely going to be the hub of Techspace. It’s the one location where everyone will be able to get together and support each other and everyone from our team has contributed to the launch. Our CPO even let me chose the palm print wallpaper in meeting room three (Nice choice, Amanda). We have a lot to look forward to!
Look out for our next Member Social on 14th July, and of course the launch of Luke Street next week. Organise your tour by contacting us here.
