When most people picture coliving for startups, they imagine a hacker house akin to a scene from Silicon Valley. And they’re not entirely off base. In 2004, Mark Zuckerberg rented a house in Palo Alto with some early Facebook employees, and their success kickstarted a movement.
Today, the business of coliving for startups is booming. Coliving for entrepreneurs has transformed the essence of the traditional hacker home into a multi-functional space that specifically caters to the startup environment and its needs.
Entrepreneurs and professionals working for startups are choosing to live and work together under the same roof for many reasons, namely convenience, flexibility, and collaboration.
Let’s dive into what exactly coliving for startups is and how it can benefit businesses.
What is coliving for startups?
Startup-focused coliving spaces are designed with both creativity and productivity in mind. Many include a separate coworking space not far from the communal chill-out areas and rooms. You can work and relax at your leisure, replacing the traditional workspace with flexibility often needed in a startup environment.
When starting a business from scratch, you are most likely thinking about your company at all hours of the day. And while it’s essential to have a healthy work-life balance, drawing a line in the sand of where work ends and play begins isn’t as cut and dry as it may seem.
Entrepreneurs building their startups often draw inspiration from their surroundings. Coliving spaces allow startup founders to immerse themselves in the people who will help them bring their ideas to fruition in a flexible, collaborative, and comfortable environment.
How can coliving spaces be beneficial for startups?
When you’re starting a business, living and working in a specifically tailored space to suit your needs breeds productivity.
A blended coliving and coworking space offer endless opportunities for a collaborative moment, no matter the time of day or week.
In startups, you never know when the next aha moment will strike. When you live with your coworkers, a breakthrough may happen over a bowl of cereal in the morning or during a shared meal at night. The ease of mixing focused work with relaxed day-to-day life makes coliving for startups so attractive.
Source: UPS(T)ART – Harvard House @Coliving.com
Thus, dynamic coliving spaces are designed to give people both productive space to focus and laid-back space to unwind—knowing the next great idea could just as quickly spur from a poolside chat as a desk.
Startup needs that can be solved by coliving
Coliving is also beneficial for startups because the managed spaces take care of everything so that you can focus on your business.
For instance, you never have to worry about restocking the toilet paper or soap, managing any home maintenance issues, buying items for the home/office like towels or pots and pans, or cleaning the common areas yourself. Most importantly, coliving spaces offer free, fast, and stable WiFi to guarantee you never miss a beat.
Choosing to co-live with your coworkers can also help form deep bonds, which is proven to increase loyalty and motivation in a team. When people feel personally connected to and inspired by their environment, they are often more focused and produce higher-quality work. This is especially important for startups, as founders benefit from surrounding themselves with a driven and passionate team.
Coliving spaces also have invaluable connections with many investment firms. Startups that choose to live and work together in a coliving space may have the opportunity to speak with these investment firms about the possibilities of creating a partnership with their business venture.
Top entrepreneur-focused coliving spaces.
Many global coliving spaces also focus on bringing together entrepreneurs, startup founders, and digital nomads/remote workers.
Europe
The Collective, based in London, has built the largest coliving space in the world. And they use this massive space to give entrepreneurs everything they could want or need to create the perfect blend of focused- and chill-out zones. Their spaces include a library, a cinema, a zen zone, a spa, a gym, and many coworking rooms dispersed throughout. They also host many events, such as yoga classes and BBQs, to create opportunities for the entire group to unite and form bonds throughout their stay.
In Lisbon, Entrepreneur Houses is also designed for entrepreneurs to co-live and co-work together. Each room is built for the ultimate work/life balance—efficient enough to breed productivity and comfortable enough to allow for relaxation. They also have a large coworking room that is free to all coliving residents.
And in Lithuania, there is a house designed for Entrepreneurs, Freelancers, and Creatives.
Asia
Like Silicon Valley, Hong Kong is a hotspot for networking opportunities. The city attracts serial entrepreneurs who are jazzed to meet investors at events and form business alliances.
Singapore is quite similar to Hong Kong in this vein. Incorporating businesses, there is so popular 80 out of the top 100 tech startups in the world are operating in Singapore.
SE Asia, on the other hand, provides a more laid-back environment for startup founders and remote workers to focus on producing great work with minimal distractions. Plenty of coworking and coliving spaces are sprinkled throughout the many stunning locations in Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, and more.
United States
Startup House, which has a selection of Houses throughout California, is designed to help young founders become better people and business owners. They organize free workshops and fantastic networking opportunities where residents can mingle with investors and grow their teams.
The idea behind these spaces is to create an environment for entrepreneurs to surround themselves with innovative people just like themselves. While many entrepreneur-focused coliving spaces are restricted to founders only, many others are open to all types of freelancers, creatives, and self-starters.
Coliving.com has several listings with this in mind. In San Francisco, they offer a space built for Tech Founders, Professionals, and Bootcamp Students. It provides a separate coworking space within the home, catering to the coworking aspect of living together.
To explore the rest of our coliving spaces for startups, check out our listings page to find the perfect place for you.
Check out Coliving for Startups
