2007-2009: Stumbling on coworking and serious consideration of changing careers
2007: I first learn about coworking
In 2007, a friend who knew about my search for services that provided a structured, supportive work environment for independent workers sent me a link to an article about coworking. At the time, coworking was still a nascent concept. By one count, there were only 14 coworking spaces by the end of that year. “That’s it!” I thought. “That is the work-environment model I’ve been looking for. I wish I had known about it sooner.”
2008: An insight and a market-research road trip
I was still not confident the coworking model could succeed. My main concern was that coworking spaces seemed sort of like telephones or fax machines: there needed to be a broad network of spaces for them to have value. How am I–or my employer who might be willing to hire remote workers–going to be able to rely on coworking if I can’t count on it being readily available near where I live. I thought coworking could eventually be a successful business model, but not before the network existed.
Then I had a conversation with a good friend (thanks, Rich!), who said something like, “At some point, everyone living in cities is just going to leave their flat, walk down the street to their corner shared office, and check into work 1000 miles away.” For me this was a eureka moment. There doesn’t need to be a wide network of spaces. If there are just enough freelancers who work from home within comfortable commuting distance of a single coworking space, why wouldn’t that be enough for that one space to succeed? All I needed was a reasonably large city for that.
In 2008, there were perhaps 10-times more coworking spaces than in 2007. That was partly because existing services began to rebrand as coworking spaces. Impact Hub (originally “The Hub”) had begun in 2005, but didn’t self-identify as a coworking space until that year. Many large cities had at least one writers’ space well before coworking, and they, too, began to rebrand as coworking spaces. The move to co-opt the coworking name as a marketing technique for standard serviced offices— “community washing” is a fitting label—had already begun. Many standard serviced offices—mostly targeting companies looking for turn-key, flexible, and affordable office space for their small teams, or individuals looking for a private offices—began to call themselves coworking spaces. The serviced office giant Regus is probably the best known example (Regus decided to community-wash their own business and rebranded themselves as the “first ever coworking space,” claiming the concept went back to 1970 when they first offered turnkey office space for individuals).I went on a road trip in the Pacific Northwest with two friends who were plausible business partners. We visited a dozen or so coworking spaces (including writers’ spaces and—tricked by the community washing—serviced offices), complemented by visits to spaces in Denver & Boulder, Colorado (where my potential partners lived), and—by myself—in Chicago (where I still lived) and in the Los Angeles area (where I had family). I still wasn’t 100% sure I would leave academia, but I was exploring the option.