Hi Kelley,

Thanks for the comments. Great to see Float Left Labs contributing with the Co-Working space in Manchester. I only hope it serves as an example for more co working in New Hampshire.

Hi Nick,

Thanks for all the information! I had no idea there was an effort in Portsmouth to start a co-working space.

I do agree with you that Dogpatch Labs and Betahouse should be models for us (in New Hampshire) if we are going to open up more co-working space.

Studio 99 is the reason we considered adding Jelly, we figured Wednesdays work best up here though- Since ManchVegas Geek lunch is every Wednesday. I hope to be able to make it down to a studio 99 jelly session some time soon

Studio 99 in Nashua hosts an active Jelly every Friday. http://www.studio99nashua.com/jelly-in-nashua/

@kelley It's certainly a strategic advantage when you run a company that already has a need for the space. In a situation like that it's a no-brainer to just grab a little more space than you need and incubate a coworking movement there. The benefits are a pool of active, dedicated freelancers, who you're already familiar with. And you know where they work :). I wish Portsmouth had a similar organization that was willing to do space-sharing in such a way...

Btw, great idea about the jelly. I should mention that Portsmouth has an active Jelly as well, and there are a number of other 'casual coworking' events around the country that can be found at http://wiki.workatjelly.com/

I believe factors hindering coworking include economy and proximity as mentioned already. To try and counteract this, and getting more people in the door we are going to start offering a weekly wednesday 'jelly' day where freelancers can come in and work for the day, making a donation- but no other commitment necessary.
If you are interested in our coworking- check out http://floatleftlabs.org/?page_id=236

Thanks for the mention.
In our limited experience at Float Left Labs it is difficult to get a CoWorking space off the ground. There are a few ways we have tried to guarantee our success, some of which overlap with Nick's comments.
1. We needed the space primarly for our organization, but had freelancers in the forefront of our thoughts in planning. Since we are an organization- extending to coworking only added a little to our administration pile, not alot of additional roles and responsibilities.
2. We looked for a space we could afford with an landlord who shared our goals. Specifically this ment finding a landlord who wanted us to succeed- Which we found with the SNHPC. This has given us a 2,000 sq. ft at an affordable price, a contingent plan to be here for 2.5 years and even the possibility of expanding to utlize an additional 2,000 sq feet if we need to grow.

I'm one of the 3 people who were involved in trying to make the Portsmouth venture (PortForward) happen. It failed / stalled primarily due to 3 factors:

1. The people that verbally committed decided that they couldn't afford the prices that would be required to keep the space open, once we had a serious proposal and space. We had hit the estimated numbers that most people agreed would be doable, but presumably due to economic conditions and personal reasons, the majority just couldn't afford it once the chips were down. Fwiw, our proposed membership plans were around $200 for part-time and $300 for full-time occupancy.

2. The particular location that we'd been working on ended up falling through because a reasonable agreement couldn't be reached with the landlord. We went back and forth on this a few times, and the space was ideal (if a little on the large side), but the last-minute changeups from the realtor and issues with Portsmouth's parking impact situation ended up being a deal breaker.

3. These things are hard work and require serious time and effort. All 3 principles have other primary ventures (Ted is a contractor, Brian has a full time job, I am bootstrapping a startup). Losing the space and lack of commitment from a large number of our potential tenants was a bit of a blow and, although we continued looking for smaller spaces afterwards, we became distracted by our primary businesses and the plans were put on hold.

Sponsorship could have helped lower the costs significantly. It's not like we didn't try that route. But I think you'll find that sponsorship for a coworking space is an odd thing, and most coworking establishments are not sponsored by any commercial entities. An ideal situation, imo, is something like what Dogpatch is doing in Boston and SF, where Polaris (a venture firm) is providing space to incubating startups, which also benefits the community by being a space where seminars and other such events can be held. BetaHouse, also in Cambridge, is a fantastic example of a ground-up effort, but it works because they have a critical mass of enthusiastic freelancers and entrepreneurs who all do their part.

The other thing to consider is space proportional to cost. The larger space you have, the lower that the overall costs can be, assuming that you have enough critical mass to fill those seats. A smaller space is more easily affordable by the principles, but has less capacity and therefore headcount is always going to be lower and costs are going to be higher per person. Portsmouth is still a rather expensive area, in terms of NH (obviously no comparison there to Cambridge), and ultimately we just couldn't make the prices work with what potential tenants were willing to afford I guess.

In hindsight, to do something like this as a roots effort, it's probably best to start small (*very* small -- maybe space for 5-6 people) with higher per-person costs and net the more dedicated individuals that don't mind paying a higher premium before trying to lower the overall costs by expanding to a larger space. Organic is the way to go.

A serious co-working proposal was floated last year for the Portsmouth area. They had verbal commitments for more than half its tenant slots, and explored possible real estate locations. It failed (stalled) primarily (in my opinion) for lack of sponsors and administrative experience.