What a year of co-working can do for your company
Three short years ago Workable was two people and one customer. Now we’re over 100 people and have over 4,000 customers. Although we started out in Greece, most of our customers are now in the United States. So it made sense for us to start a Boston office, which we opened in November 2014. We had just three employees in Boston when we opened, so we rented a small office in WeWork Fort Point, a large co-working space.
What’s a co-working space?
A co-working space, for those unfamiliar, is a large office that houses many companies. Typically you’ll find small businesses with up to 20 employees, and startups that are growing but are not ready to invest in their own dedicated office space yet. Each company has its own office or desk, but their direct neighbors are other companies.
Our co-working experience:
Since moving to Boston we’ve raised $27 million in venture funding, and have gone from 30 employees to over 100, company-wide. Ultimately, we decided to move on from co-working. A few months ago, we set up our brick-and-mortar office, a year after we first opened up in Boston. Without co-working, this transition would have been a lot tougher.
What co-working offered us:
An affordable launchpad
If Workable had decided to move into our own office right away we would have been looking at a 3–6,000 square foot office that costs upwards of $40 per square foot in our Fort Point neighborhood. Additionally, there would have been tens of thousands of dollars in upfront costs for the buildout. We would have been paying $10,000 a month from the very beginning on the monthly lease alone, just to have space for three employees, not including the build out. That is a major commitment for a young company that can’t predict how many employees it will add over its first few years, and is just starting out in a new market
A recruiting asset
Our co-working space was a great recruiting tool. Our shared office center offered great amenities, contemporary meeting spaces and access to fun events. When you’re young, you still want your working space to have a nice buzz. Three people sitting at desks in the corner of a 4,000 square foot place can seem daunting. With a company that size it’s tough to stay on top of amenities such as coffee, water, and snacks. Co-working spaces are well-designed and have a modern feel that improves the candidate experience.
A community
A lot of co-working spaces pride themselves on their community. That isn’t just some BS they make up to sell more units. WeWork had a ton of events and we were able to meet a lot of like-minded people; people from other startups, law firms, marketing services and other companies that were useful for us to get to know. We found SocialFulcrum, one of the marketing agencies that we have hired, through co-working. That introduction was good for them and good for us.
WeWork also hosts several vibrant networking events that are relevant for small businesses. They have educational sessions, vendors who bring lunch and VCs who come in to talk about pitching. These kinds of community events made our workplaces feel upbeat, but they’re hard for most small companies to access until they get bigger.
A chance to learn the city
While co-working, we were able to get a lay of the land in our Boston neighborhood and figure out where we wanted to establish our long-term office. Although our customers are all over the world, our goal was to create a strong recruiting presence in Boston. When moving into a new market, it’s important to get a good hold of where your potential employees want to be, what the right neighborhoods are and what’s convenient in terms of transportation, parking and other amenities.
Why and how we moved to a dedicated office
We were feeling disconnected as a team
One of the co-working downsides we started to feel as we got bigger was that our Boston team started to feel a bit disconnected. When there were six of us we all fit in one space and it was fine. At some point on the way to 15, things started to change. People from Sales and Support didn’t meet the new people coming into Marketing and vice versa. We had four office rooms, but we didn’t visit our colleagues in other rooms, unless we really needed to.
We buffered time for our moving schedule
Another thing we learned about moving into a new office is that you need to schedule in some buffer time to make sure you complete the process on time despite any obstacles. It took us about six months from start to finish. In general, finding the right office space might take up to two months, then one month to finish the lease, a couple more weeks to finalize design and build out plans, and finally a couple of months for build out.
Now, in our newly minted Boston office, we’re on pace to grow from 15 employees to 50. We loved co-working, because it allowed us to grow our company significantly while we searched for the right office location for the foreseeable future. Renting a shared office space saved us money, helped us attract top talent, helped us get to know people in the Boston community and allowed us to take our time finding the right long-term location. (Only a few blocks away in Fort Point.)
When we first moved to Boston, it would have been impossible for us to get up and running without renting a shared office space. Co-working allowed us to grow without as many growing pains. I don’t know how startups did it before co-working spaces were an option.
