Where the coffee shop meets the cubicle

By Kerry Miller

updated 4:49 p.m. ET Feb. 27, 2007

In the earliest stage of his startup Darius Roberts, 27, shared the de facto office of many a San Francisco techie: A coffee shop.

Working out of a Wi-Fi-enabled java joint in the Mission district was infinitely more pleasant and productive for him than flying solo in a home office at his Oakland apartment. And it provided the opportunity to meet other developers he might even be able to hire one day, as his Web-based car-sharing company, DartCar, grew.

But when Roberts picked up a flyer about a "community office space" called the Hat Factory, he realized there was an even better option. For $10 a day or $170 per month, the Hat Factory could provide him with a desk, standard office amenities, and access to a shared kitchen, private meeting room, and lounge. And something else — community spirit. "You can meet people at a coffee shop, but it's harder to have meaningful interactions," Roberts says. "Co-working lends itself to that."

Over the past few years, co-working facilities — both grassroots, co-op-like versions and for-profit models — have started popping up across the country and the world, from Seattle to Copenhagen. A co-working wiki hosts pages for dozens of other cities with co-working initiatives in progress. And while the concept of shared office space is nothing new to entrepreneurs, an increasing number of them are signing on and finding that the community-building and networking benefits outweigh even the virtues of a shared fax machine.

In a recent report on the future of small business, the Silicon-Valley based Institute for the Future pegged co-working as a trend to watch over the next decade. After co-working first took off with clusters of free-agent programmers and writers, its flexibility and low cost have also proven a good match for startups unwilling to sign a long-term lease. Because many of these facilities operate on a gym-membership model that doesn't assign workers to specific desks, co-working is cheaper than most subleasing arrangements. And unlike traditional business incubators, co-working isn't just for startups with high-growth potential.

The study's lead author, Steve King, says the increasing popularity of co-working facilities reflects the rise of one-person "personal businesses" as well as a broader fluidity between virtual and real-world communities.

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