| 2009: The decision to return to PragueNot long after that road trip, my wife and I decided it made sense to return to the Czech Republic. My wife is Czech, and I had agreed that if we were not happy in the US after two years, we would move back. She gave it five years. I was toward the end of my second postdoctoral fellowship and had decided I wanted to leave academia. That decision to move back to Prague cemented my decision to start a coworking space. Prague seemed to me even better for a coworking space than the cities I had considered in the U.S. I had lived there and knew there was a large expat community, many of whom worked as freelancers and lacked a good social and physical office. A couple of good friends already fit that description, including Rich who I mentioned above as bringing me to that eureka moment. It seemed that a transient, international city like Prague might be in more need of a community-oriented coworking space than less international cities: transplants, especially across language and cultural barriers, may be in more need of the social benefits of coworking than long-time locals, I reasoned. This was before the concept of digital nomadism took root and that observation became somewhat obvious.2010: Locus’s Early DaysThe move to Prague and the existing coworking sceneThe time from moving to Prague to opening Locus went very quickly. Coworking was already beginning to take off by the time I arrived. There was already a small coworking space, the first coworking space in the Czech Republic, Coffice, located just off I.P. Pavlova (original home to the startup Slevomat, among other startups). There was another coworking space soon to be opened, also in Vinohrady. Unfortunately, that space did not last a year (unfortunately because it was a beautiful space with a caring, capable owner, and it felt to me like it “deserved” to succeed).One expat was already organising successful jellies among English-speaking freelancers in Prague, with the intention to eventually open a coworking space (a “jelly” is an informal form of coworking at people’s homes or at cafes, often organized as a tool to start or complement a permanent coworking space). A group of Czechs had just bought the Czech-Slovak franchise rights for Impact Hub (what was then just, “The Hub”). Their first location opened in Smíchov later in the same month that Locus opened.We had moved to the Czech Republic on November 1st, 2009, and Locus opened just six months later, on May 4th. My second son, Adam, was born on May 28th. It was a busy time. Sometime between February and April, I was buying a kid-carrier backpack online from a woman located Krakovská 22, just off of Wenceslas Square. The person who I bought it from asked if I was looking for a flat, and I said, “No, unfortunately. We just signed a lease!” We had just signed a lease on a long-term flat about a month earlier. “You don’t have anything that could be used as a homey shared office, do you?” She showed me a dual-use 106 m2 flat, and it became the first Locus. |
