Flexibility is also important as you grow your business. Co-working spaces can accommodate changes to the size of your team and don’t require a firm commitment to a yearlong lease like most commercial spaces. Co-working spaces offer memberships ranging from a daily drop-in pass to a monthly or yearly membership to make changes in the size of your team — or even a change in location — painless.
Co-working spaces are also a great place to get hired if you want to work at a startup. A handful of our summer interns found full-time jobs with startups within our co-working space, having met the companies’ leaders while interviewing them for our company blog. Then, just the other week while immersed in a game of ping pong, I met a visitor who had come in to eat lunch with a client. We were introduced and started talking, and now we’ve hired him to lead our business development team.
Co-working spaces can ease some of the stress of starting a new business and provide valuable resources and connections you won’t find anywhere else. They’re popular for the flexibility they offer new businesses, but the real value is in their assisted serendipity: the informal conversations and the expert advice members are happy to offer one another.