Startups Sharing Office Space?

by joeguilmette on 10/21/2007, 5:56 PM with 10 comments

I've been given a lot of advice lately to forgo a traditional office and instruct engineers to work from home and meet together once per week with everyone.

Do you think other, similarly cash strapped startups would want to share an office? Consider this:

One firm would rent a small board-room sized space, with perhaps one small executive office. These are available for around $500-1000/month. The space would be shared with about 5-7 other startups, each paying around $100-150/month to use the space once per week.

For the firm leasing the office, the space would be almost free. The firms subletting would have access to a very cheap, fully furnished office.

Does this sound like something people would be interested in? Any other thoughts?

  • by avibryant on 10/21/2007, 6:44 PM

    Vancouver has something like this, only more elaborate - http://abetterplacetowork.com/ . I can also say, from DabbleDB's experience, that: - 5-6 people can work quite well together in a boardroom type space, all sitting around a long table together, especially if they're all used to working on laptops anyway - having the executive office in the back is important so you have somewhere for private meetings and phone calls - sharing office space is fun if you like the other company (we've had both Snipshot and Auctomatic subletting from us at different times) - even if you have the office space full time (which we do), people will probably only show up 3 days a week or so (at least for us, we're most likely all found in the office from about 11-6 on Tue-Thurs, and spend the rest of the time working from home/cafes/etc).

  • by rrival on 10/21/2007, 6:16 PM

    Have you seen CoWorking? http://coworking.pbwiki.com/

  • by gibsonf1 on 10/21/2007, 6:10 PM

    We actually have good extra space in our SF SOMA office. Let us know if you need any - maybe we could work out an arrangement. (We also have a phone system that allows multiple companies to have their own call-in identity)

  • by vizier on 10/21/2007, 6:50 PM

    To me, it's worth paying a little money to be close to your team all day. You can do it cheaply. For example, http://bunkerstudios.com/ offers space in San Francisco for about $200/month per person.

  • by ed on 10/21/2007, 9:39 PM

    A bunch of people seem to be thinking along these lines.

    CIT in Cambridge is one example. In the Bay Area you have CitizenSpace and HatFactory (both coworking spaces, but I've heard that CitizenSpace is the better of the two).

  • by mynameishere on 10/22/2007, 1:58 AM

    Most cities have these (almost) free office spaces called "Starbucks". You can meet there until revenue starts coming in.

  • by breck on 10/21/2007, 10:30 PM

    Similar things: In Cambridge there is the Cambridge Innovation Center(CIC). Also in Cambridge is Betahouse.