0 Boston Plans Services and Office Space for Entrepreneurs

Posted on March 10, 2016 by Wil Catlin

Credit: Boston Business Journal

Tech industry insiders are trying to find better ways to connect with you. What do you care about when you consider starting something new:

Location
Cost
Term
Amenities
Collaboration
Mentors
Synergistic services

From the BBJ:

At a Monday meeting in Boston of the governing board of MassTech Collaborative’s Innovation Institute, industry leaders talked about what’s working with the state’s vast programs and services for entrepreneurs, what could be done better, and how significant the services are to the broader economy.

Massachusetts is already home to several “collaborative workspaces” for entrepreneurs, ranging from co-working spaces such as WeWork to makerspaces such as Arisan’s Asylum in Somerville, to incubators such as Greentown Labs in Somerville and accelerators such as Boston-based MassChallenge.

The MassTech Collaborative’s 2015 “Innovation Index” found that there are about 33 co-working spaces, 25 makerspaces, 26 incubator programs and 15 accelerator programs in Massachusetts.

0 Park Square Shared Office Space: WeWork’s New Location

Posted on March 3, 2016 by Wil Catlin

Credit: Boston Globe

WeWork continues its global expansion with adding 31 St. James Avenue in Boston’s Back Bay to its location roster.

The Park Square Building, 31 St. James Avenue, is a 445,464 square foot building 11 stories tall with 40,524 square foot floors according to CoStar. The building was built in 1922 and is owned by Capital Properties.

Where is Park Square in Boston? Here’s Wikipedia’s overview:

Park Square in downtown Boston, Massachusetts is bounded by Stuart, Charles Street South, Boylston, and Arlington Streets. It is the home of the Boston Four Seasons Hotel, the Boston Park Plaza Hotel & Towers, and nearly a dozen restaurants. To the north across Boylston Street is the Boston Public Garden. To the east is the Washington Street Theatre District. The Bay Village neighborhood is to the south, and Back Bay is to the west.

At one time, the terminus of the Boston and Providence Railroad was located in the square, however after South Station opened, the terminal was closed.

A small street in the district was renamed “Park Plaice” in honor of Legal Sea Foods, a restaurant located there.

0 Boston’s Big Corporations Tap into Shared Startup Office Space

Posted on January 24, 2016 by Wil Catlin

WeWork South Station shared office space

Credit: BBJ

Why do Liberty Mutual, Silicon Valley Bank (Nasdaq: SIVB) and IBM (NYSE: IBM), Comcast (Nasdaq: CMCSA) and Constant Contact (Nasdaq: CTCT) take temporary office space form providers like Work Bar and WeWork? In short, management wants certain aspects of these business to think like a startup and not like a lumbering giant.

From the Boston Business Journal:

“It allows us to get (access) to new ideas and new talent,” said Sandeep Gupta, a vice president and head of innovation at Liberty Mutual. “You can do that pretty easily just rubbing shoulders in the hallway.”

Liberty Mutual’s entrance into WeWork this fall coincided with the launch of the Solaria team. The incubator has a broad mandate: developing new products and services with “transformational potential,” that may or may not have anything to do with insurance.

At the moment, the company has two offices in WeWork that can fit a combined 32 people. Right now, the rooms are home to about a dozen Liberty Mutual employees and members of two startups, end-of-life planning company Cake and drone maker Xactsense. Liberty Mutual offers the companies free space, as well as human resources and other types of support, while the startups offer advice and connections in two areas of keen interest to the insurer.

0 WeWork Gains Traction in Boston and Beyond

Posted on January 20, 2016 by Wil Catlin

Credit: BBJ

What would it be like to leave your office and work at WeWork?

WeWork is an American company which provides shared workspace, community, and services for entrepreneurs, freelancers, startups and small businesses. WeWork designs and builds physical and virtual communities[6] in which entrepreneurs share space and office services and have the opportunity to work together.[7] The company’s 30,000+ members have access to health insurance, an internal social network, social events and workshops, and an annual summer retreat.[8][9][10]

From the Boston Business Journal’s website:

WeWork is one of many companies in the Boston area that offer co-working space for the city’s burgeoning startup scene, including Worklab, Coalition, and the Cambridge Innovation Center. While its membership prices are on the costly end, ranging from $45 a month to more than $450 a month per desk, the price is not a deterrent for entrepreneurs.

For a relatively modest cost, entrepreneurs say they get a ready-made office space complete with a sense of community, an internal social network and the enriching and collaborative startup culture that prospective employees want when they sign on to work for a startup.

0 Harvard Business Grads Moving to Tech, Startups

Posted on January 5, 2016 by Wil Catlin

Credit: Boston Business Journal

Harvard grads are more likely to choose startups to begin their career rather than the traditional path of large corporations.

According to the BBJ, “one in five MBA students in Harvard Business School’s 2015 graduating class have entered the technology sector, the highest level since 2000 — that is, the year the dot-com bubble was about to implode.”

The Boston Business Journal article continues, noting “the newest crop of graduates also possessed a more entrepreneurial streak than their predecessors. Nine percent of graduates accepted offers from startup companies, nearly double the percentage from the previous year, according to statistics recently published by HBS. Another 9 percent started their own businesses, up from 8 percent in 2014. There were 915 students in HBS’s 2015 graduating class.”

You can read the full article on the Boston Business Journal’s website.

0 Babson College Readies Downtown Boston Co-Working Space

Posted on December 22, 2015 by Wil Catlin

Credit: BBJ

Babson College will be offering a shared co-working drop in center at 100 High Street in the Financial District of Boston. Kerry Healey, Babson President, comments that nearly half of the 16,000 graduates live or work in greater Boston.

This is the first of its kind where higher education is offering a retail presence rather than just a club experience on an upper floor.

According to the Boston Business Journal, “the Wellesley college known for its success preparing entrepreneurs is leasing 9,000 square feet at 100 High St., including 2,000 square feet of ground floor space fronting on the Federal Street side of the building, in the Financial District. Graduate business students will be able to take classes at the site and alumni will be able to work in a co-working setting…The location, scheduled to open before fall 2016, will more than double Babson’s space in Boston.”

You can read the full article on the BBJ’s local website.

0 Map of Boston Coworking Office Space

Posted on December 8, 2015 by Wil Catlin

Coworking office space in Boston by geographic location, courtesy of Xconomy:

map of boston and cambridge shared office space

Credit: Xconomy

Andy Palmer, a Boston serial entrepreneur and angel investor, ‘thinks Boston would be best served by a series of spaces spread among different neighborhoods along the subway system’s Red Line, which touches the city’s busiest startup hubs, including Kendall Square in Cambridge and the Seaport District and Downtown Crossing in Boston. And if you look at the map, that strategy seems to be playing out…Boston’s neighborhoods “all need good, solid coworking spaces because they all have startups and founders that want to do startups in these areas,” Palmer says. “It’s healthy to have these short-term lease options in every one of these areas.”’

0 Rent Boston Office Space by the Month

Posted on October 27, 2015 by Wil Catlin

LiquidSpace

Office space in major markets is now available on an hour, daily or monthly plan. If you’re a startup, pick your market and pick your plan.

From Globest:

LiquidSpace has launched monthly rentals, enabling those startups and growing teams to rent a primary office space by the month. Monthly space is available in San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Orange County and Boston, with plans to roll out monthly office space across the global LiquidSpace network by the end of 2015. LiquidSpace has had its sights on expanding into monthly space for a while, but it considered how to accomplish that in a way that improves on the traditional approach while also extending a new, flexible option for building owners to monetize the excess space.

Mark Gilbreath, founder and CEO of LiquidSpace, tells GlobeSt.com: “We’ve definitely struck a chord with both building owners and occupiers who have vacant space to share. Millions of square feet of small, high quality office spaces sit idle, robbing owners of potential revenue and asset value growth. Now for the first time, there is a simple and cost-effective way to monetize these 500- to 5000-square- foot spaces, by connecting directly to growing startups and corporate occupiers with satellite teams.”

LiquidSpace allows landlords and tenants to list space online on an hourly, daily or monthly basis, with LiquidSpace taking a 10% cut of monthly rents, providing differing rates for daily and hourly leases. The LiquidSpace network allows space providers to create and manage custom profiles as well as communicate directly with growing companies and manage all aspects of a transaction.

0 Best Meeting Spots Outside of the Office

Posted on October 27, 2015 by Wil Catlin

Credit: BetaBoston

The best discussions never take in a formal setting. Where do you get your best deals done?

A BetaBoston article recently spurred the topic, noting the following scene:

“Most cities would kill for a meeting place as magical as the open brick courtyard behind the Charles Hotel. It’s a simple enough spot: benches and planters, a portal leading to Harvard Square, and two restaurants with patios, Legal Seafoods and Henrietta’s Table. But it’s the place where fast-growing startups like Recorded Future, which helps businesses anticipate cyberattacks, and Formlabs, which makes a 3D printer, first connected with investors. The travel site Kayak was born over a lunch at Legal’s, the two founders agreeing to put in a million bucks each and toasting with gin and tonics. In the spring of 2004, two Harvard undergrads, Eduardo Saverin and Mark Zuckerberg, ate breakfast at an outdoor table at Henrietta’s and talked to a junior venture capitalist about their month-old startup, Thefacebook. His Waltham firm, Battery Ventures, passed.”

0 Cloud Computing’s Impact on Today’s Office Space

Posted on September 14, 2015 by Wil Catlin

Office space is used far differently today than 25 years ago. Production is no longer measured by how much time you log in a seat at your desk, but rather what is accomplished by the day’s end. Some jobs still require sitting in a specific seat — lab technicians and receptionists are the two that come to mind — but those restrictions are becoming less and less applicable to the majority of professions. At our company we offer a wide variety of options for our team members, much of which is a direct result enhanced virtual desktops. Only a few years ago, you had to sit at your desk in order to access your computer and critical electronic files; now your electronic desktop can follow you.

co-working and shared office space infographic

Credit: MBACentral

An article from MBAcentral on coworking spaces observes “the changing nature of business and the workforce [noting] 4 in 10 U.S. workers…will be temps, freelancers or contractors, 8 in 10 Large corporations [are] planning to increase use of flexible workforce, Nearly 90% of businesses have already adopted some cloud computing. [and] 80% of companies offer flexible working arrangements, including telework.”

You can read the full article, here.