It all starts with an idea. You ponder whether it’s good enough to start a real company. One day, you take the leap. Soon, you’ve convinced another friend to to help you build out this idea. Before you know it, you have a product released and have your first customers. Sales get so overwhelming that you need to hire more people to handle the load. You go from a couple of people working remotely to a small team working together in cafes. Eventually coffee shops aren’t cutting it so you move to coworking spaces. Things go well for quite awhile until you raise your first institutional round and realize you have to do a lot of hiring. Not only are you overwhelmed with all the decisions involved in growing your company but you’re also tasked with finding where to office out of.
This is the pain point that several coworking spaces including Work Well Coworking East Austin is looking to address. Too many times have you heard of companies leasing out massive spaces and then having to find creative ways to lease out the extra space. That’s actually the exact story of the founder of Journey Coworking, the space prior to Work Well Coworking East Austin. The previous founder decided to buy a warehouse but had additional space and repurposed it as a coworking space. Eventually he chose to concentrate on his growing company but it shows a real problem in office space as Austin continues to grow.
Austin’s Growing Tech Scene
Austin has been infamously nabbed as a place to start a company but not grow it. Too often you’ll hear of startups having to go outside of Texas to raise larger rounds. You ask Bay Area or NYC investors and few will acknowledge any real opportunity in funding in Texas. 2017 was a rough year in terms of funding as summarized in an article by Mary Ann Azevedo at Crunchbase, “Austin’s venture scene went on a roller coaster ride in the first three quarters of this year: down, then way up, then way down.” The article expresses optimism of new funds and changes coming in 2018.
With new opportunities in capital, Austin is now seeing a problem with everything else that follows after a company raises their series A or is in a growth stage. This is also the prime opportunity for spaces to take advantage of solving this pain point.
Wellness As You Grow
Work Well Win is a national coworking space that started in Greenwich, CT. Their next expansion into Austin led to Work Well Coworking East Austin which is a launching pad to their much larger space Work Well Eightfold on 3443 Ed Bluestein Blvd. The new space will have a yoga studio, cafe with local Austin products showcasing companies in the space and an Alpaca vending machine. You’ll notice as you walk through the kitchen at Work Well Coworking East Austin that all their snacks and beverage options are organic and/or health conscious.
What Work Well is good at is logistically planning out what companies need as they grow. When you first walk into their space you’ll notice a beautiful lobby with a glass encompassed conference room. The area is sectioned off with an area for hot seats in the common area by the kitchen/bar and a more quiet area (no music blaring) on the opposite side for companies with 6 or less people. Once a company grows to a larger size, they’ll upgrade upstairs and have their own private conference room next to their team work space. Lastly, when they’ve grown to a medium sized startup and need their own space but don’t want to commit to a several year lease, they can go to the Work Well Eightfold location. No matter what stage you’re at, Work Well Coworking has a space for you.