In their CV, HR professionals can confidently list achievements like "Experience in opening an office for an IT team" or "Experience in selecting a coworking space and housing an IT team." Those who have been through this experience will understand me :) I am sharing my experience of finding a coworking space for a team of 5 people instead of an office.
Out of dozens of articles, I singled out "Coworking Spaces in Kyiv" and "100 Coworking Spaces in 360 Days." Even though the review of 5 Kyiv coworking spaces is from five years ago, borrow the filtering principle.
I love online services like Google, and I formed my sourcing this way. Just like that :)
In my search, I considered four parameters: location (downtown/blue branch), a separate room, good internet, and a meeting room.
Location
Colleagues considered the following important:
- Convenient access to the office within a 30-minute public transport ride.
- A 5-minute walk to various cuisine restaurants.
- The absence of repair work in the coworking building.
This filter greatly simplified the search.
Separate room
It was also essential to have the ability to communicate without speaking in half-whispers and not just in the kitchen. If the meeting room in the coworking space is occupied, you should be able to easily communicate with a remote team or client at your desk. It turned out that some rooms were primarily designed for 8-10 people. Another coworking space limited these rooms to being behind curtains. Make sure to clarify the details.
Good Internet
Make sure there are several internet service providers in the coworking building. At our previous location, we had to endure a few months of dealing with a monopoly and frequent outages. No matter how absurd it may sound in the 21st century :)
Meeting Room
Ask the administration to share the booking frequency of the meeting room over the past period to understand the usage intervals. It's important for the team to have access to both confidential conversations with clients and moments of solitude.
Parking wasn't brought up as it's more convenient to use public transportation to get to the office.
But what about the advantages of renting an office?
If there were plans to grow to 10-20-30 people, we would definitely look for an office. Here you can clearly assess the office's class, area, and price per square meter.
How it ended up
We rented a room for 6 people with attic windows, our own bathroom, good internet, a room for meetings that was almost always available, and full support - daily cleaning, a water cooler, a coffee machine, and a microwave - all in the city center for 15,000 hryvnias.
+1 experience
I asked Roman Kravchenko, the founder of the 10 startups accelerator IoT Hub, why he started with a coworking space and continues to use it for several years now.
I would be grateful, not only on my behalf, if you could share your experience in finding a location for your team. Leave comments or write in private messages.
Next is Odessa. A few spoilers :) A familiar Co-Founder/Product Manager will tell you what they considered when choosing an office, besides restricted access to the premises, a power generator, a backup internet line.
