Who is co-working really for? Startups is the wrong answer!!
In India we have quite a few coworking spaces that have come up. While most of them started out to provide office space options for small businesses, startups and freelancers some of the big brand ones have gravitated towards serving bigger companies. I recently read a report that talked about this trend Why the co-working industry is gravitating towards large companies and SMEs.
Out of the 12 million seats, 10 million is earmarked for enterprise customers. It makes sense financially for big brand spaces that have crores of investment into real estate trying to catch the big fish to sell out the space in large numbers.
Then I thought the smaller coworking spaces at least should be more startup friendly. To my astonishment I found out that some of the smaller coworking spaces are also saying teams need to take minimum 5 seats and some even saying that you need to take 20 seats minimum. This is a worrying trend according to me. If all players slowly gravitate towards the bigger fish then how would startups, freelancers and small businesses get flexible and cost-effective space options?
Depending on the size of your company you should look at the right place for you. Some brands might try to get you in cheap and then put a service retainer clause and lock you in. If your business and its growth is unpredictable, which is true for most startups, then my advice would be to get an office space anticipating the worst case scenario. It is best not to spend too much on office space in the early stages of your company. If your worry is about retaining talent because your office is not so great, then my answer to that is do you need that employee who is more interested in swanky interiors than in building something awesome?
After looking at various posts and answers on Quora we put together a checklist that lists down all the points you should consider while looking for co-working or shared offices. You can read about this checklist and how to apply it to your business here : The Definitive Office Space Checklist — GoFloaters.
