Coworking Spaces: Work Space Combined with Networking Benefits for Startups
By Space Coast Daily // April 13, 2019
One cost solution many business startups are turning to is the use of coworking spaces which saves a huge amount of overhead costs. Additionally, there may be at least one hidden benefit of these shared office areas – the opportunity for networking.
These spaces provide a work spot combined with networking benefits for startups. Here are some of the reasons to consider coworking spaces and how this cost-saving solution will benefit your startup in terms of networking.
First, it’s important to understand what networking is. You may already understand the concept that it’s not just what you know, but rather often more about who you know that launches you into success in the business world. While a great part of it is hooking up people with other people to promote each other’s interests, it has other components to it as well.
Ideally, a coworking space should foster an environment where business startups thrive, and networking may be a secret link at the root of its success.
Networking connects:
- People
- Ideas
- Opportunities
The success that is birthed from these connections may encourage you. The unexpected benefits derived along the way may surprise and inspire you to become part of a coworking environment where you will become skilled at networking, which will propel and perpetuate the cycle of personal and business growth.
Networking with other professionals in coworking spaces help you stay focused
A study published in Forbes, Deskmag, and Fast Company, 11 incredible coworking statistics infographic from Office Vibe, indicates that those who are part of a co-work environment experience better levels of engagement and higher success rates with less feelings of stress fatigue.
The studies reveal startup coworkers stay on task 64 percent longer than their peers who opt to work at home, in a startup incubator setting, or in a coffee shop at a make-shift work table. Additionally, 68 percent said they were able to focus better while coworking.
One other benefit of working from a coworking space is that you may discover the future hot startups early. For example, some of Silicon Valley’s hottest startups, namely Instagram, Mashable, and 99designs, all were working from a coworking space at some point. So imagine the opportunities that might arise from working alongside future’s A-players.
Individuals join to generate energy, well-being and create mutual success
Turns out that the idea of many hands make work lighter may be truer than we thought. It might sound like a paradox, but going it alone alongside others who are going it alone creates a network of success.
Whether you’re renting your space by the hour or by the month, you are sharing it with other professionals who are motivated to succeed. These spaces filled with other entrepreneurs help you stay focused, and this energy extends long after working hours and beyond the coworking space environment.
A sense of community spurs innovation
coworking spaces are packed with people who tend to be innovators with a passion and have a lot of variety of skills and talent. The coworking environment tends to draw various fields of work and industries together under one roof.
When you allow yourself to tap into this pool of excellence, you begin to feed off of each other’s strong points and abilities. You will probably find yourself trading and sharing skills to help each other’s startups.
Learn from each other
One day you may be connecting with a business owner in your coworking space and receiving advice from a mentor, and the next day you may be the mentor giving advice.
A co-work environment brings together an office full of startup owners and first-time entrepreneurs, each with different skills and different types of businesses.
This creates a sense of community filled with professionals who are not competing with each other, so all threats are removed and both are more likely to help the other succeed. Working alongside other business owners gives you the opportunity to bounce ideas off of each other.
Share insights, one professional to another, without feeling as though you are competing. If you are struggling in one area, the person working next to you may have the answer to help, and you may be able to return the favor.
Coworking spaces create happiness
People who may have never otherwise met each other are now working side by side, constantly working and interacting.
All of this positive human contact with other professionals seems to make those who share coworking spaces feel happier, while most say they feel more confident while coworking and find it easier to start conversations with people outside of work claiming to have better interactions with others even beyond the coworking environment.
This happy, mingling networking feeling extends even beyond the coworking space.
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