Have Work Need Space
Loosecubes helps road warriors find office space — and inspiration — almost anywhere.
COWORKER-IN-CHIEF Campbell McKellar wants Loosecubes to be a global leader in the growing coworking movement.
© PETER KOCH
There's a reason you call yourself "road warrior." Business travel can be an uphill battle — to catch the plane, make the meeting, nail the pitch, close the deal and, finally, get some sleep. Between it all, you still need to get work done. In our web-ready, mobile world, that should be easy.
But consider the options. The corner café has spotty WiFi, is too loud to take phone calls and, well, how many mocha lattes can you really drink? The dark, stuffy hotel business center is none-too-attractive, either; you'll likely be all alone, unproductive and uninspired. Coworking centers seem like a smart option, but how do you find the right combination of location, price and amenities? And if you're a feisty, energetic salesperson, do you really want to end up in a low-energy space filled with silent web programmers?
Enter Loosecubes, an online startup that matches business travelers with open desk space. Since its launch in June 2010, it has grown from humble beginnings — just 20 or so coworking spaces around Manhattan and Brooklyn — to become the world's largest marketplace for shared workspace, with more than 1,500 locations listed in 562 cities, including every major city in America. With that kind of momentum — and with an idealistic goal of transforming the way we work to foster creativity and collaboration — Loosecubes is creating a buzz.
The way it works is simple: Businesses with extra space sign up to be hosts and offer their space — usually with the typical battery of amenities, including high-speed internet access, bathrooms, some sort of kitchen and printing services — for daily, weekly or monthly rates. Mobile workers in need of space can search the listings by location, price, vibe and other factors. When they find what they're looking for, they send an inquiry and, if the host accepts, the transaction is made through the site using PayPal and the reservation confirmed. Imagine couchsurfing. com for business travel.
But is plonking down in the middle of another company's strange and unfamiliar office really better than holing up in your hotel room? On a sunny autumn day, I took Loosecubes for a test drive to see what the hype was all about. First, I logged onto the site and searched for an office in Brooklyn that accepted "everyone" (the site is set up so hosts can specify the species of worker — entrepreneurs, designers, artists, accountants and so on — they're willing to host). Dozens of options popped up, but one caught my eye: Loosecubes HQ. The fee? A paltry $5 per day. I couldn't resist. I fired off an inquiry and shortly received a welcome email from host Anna T. with a payment link. Easy enough. Now offto the office.
Just a subway stop from Manhattan, the Loos-ecubes office is located in the hip, post-industrial warehouse neighborhood of DUMBO. Anthony Marinos, an energetic guy who looked like a younger version of Einstein — wild hair, thick mustache — greeted me with an outstretched hand. Marinos' job is marketing, social media and customer service, but his official title is Captain Awesome, and he played the part well. Decked out in a mismatched sweater-shirt-tie combo and a very colorful, very retro jacket, he took me on a whirlwind tour. First he showed me to my desk — a plain white table with a light and an outlet, pushed up to a window. Then to the requisite water cooler, a cupboard full of dishes, a sink, a refrigerator stocked with coconut water ("I know a guy.") and a, er, Civil War-replica tent for taking phone calls and holding meetings ("It's a long story...").
Seven full-time workers pattered away at computers while two other transients — an illustrator and a graphic designer — worked nearby. Over the course of the day, I would also meet a freelance writer (we exchanged business cards) and a software developer, both members of the rotating cast of characters and potential coworkers who come to this quirky-casual office space for two reasons: to get work done and to be inspired.
The Loosecubes system seems to be an obvious win-win for both the brick-and-mortar businesses that turn vacant desks and conference rooms into extra revenue, and for the visiting workers in need of office amenities. Less obvious, though, are the fringe benefits of sharing space with a diverse group of strangers, some of whom work in different fields and have very different backgrounds. Networking opportunities abound, and cross-disciplinary interactions can lead to non-linear, creative thinking.
"We find, as people come into Loosecubes saying 'I want to monetize my extra space,' that they leave saying, 'I just got a new business partnership with someone who came into my office.' Or 'I just hired this person,'" says founder Campbell McKellar. And because these relationships are professionally oriented, McKellar argues that they have an economic value well beyond that of the space exchange.
When she first hit on the idea of Loose-cubes in 2009, that thought hadn't yet occurred. At the time, McKeller was part of a six-person real estate company in Manhattan, struggling through the mortgage crisis. When her coworkers' depressed funk became unbearable, she cut a deal with her bosses to work remotely from a cottage in Maine. The change was rejuvenating. McKellar worked on a deck overlooking the ocean or on a sofa by the fireplace. "It was really, really great," McKellar says, "...for a while." Eventually, though, working in slippers began to take its toll. Her back got sore, the iffy cell phone reception was a nuisance, and it was hard to get serious work done.
Thanks to the wonders of communications technologies, she could work from anywhere, but she also needed a productive environment. She envisioned an idyllic "artist barn" with WiFi and a view out over a sea of sweet-smelling pines. A light bulb halo materialized: At the end of her Maine sabbatical, McKellar returned to New York, hired a couple of software developers, secured $1.2 million in venture capital from Accel Partners and Battery Ventures, and set about creating her vision.
For now, the Loosecubes HQ stands in for my own personal artist barn. It takes airplanes a full 79 seconds to pass by my desk window on their way into
LaGuardia, and North Brooklyn's crowded, jigsaw skyline fills up the view beneath them. The silvery tongue of the East River sweeps tugboats and ferries beneath the Williamsburg Bridge, and, if I roll my chair back six inches, to my left I have a straight-shot view to the Empire State Building. The cavernous office is quiet without being overly so, the WiFi is instant, and I'm surrounded by creative minds to bounce ideas offof. Permanent staffers know the 'hood and make lunchtime recommendations. My colleagues for the day are friendly but respectful of my privacy and of the work environment. In other words, it beats the pants off of a chaotic Starbucks or the hermitage of a hotel room.
Fellow coworker Pete Gamlen, a young British illustrator who's coloring some portraits of Shakespeare and Verdi that he's done for The New York Times Book Review, says he comes in from his home office once or twice a week. Gamlen likes the change in scenery, saying it helps keep his work fresh. "That's really what the company's all about," Gamlen says, "is bringing different people with different purposes together and creating a good energy and atmosphere between them."
Of course, the idea of coworking is not a new one. What is new is how quickly the trend is growing. A 2006 report by the Government Accountability Office estimated that 42.6 million — or 31% — of Ameri-cans are freelance or contract workers. Since then, the Freelancers Union, an advocacy organization for freelancers, has more than doubled its membership as people have lost their full-time jobs in the down economy and turned to freelance to make ends meet. And, of course, there will always be armies of business travelers looking for a temporary place to set up shop.
McKellar, for her part, sees this as an opportunity for her nascent company, which has more on its agenda than being a desk rental clearinghouse. For her, it's about trying to build a community around what she considers a permanent shift in the way we work. "Coworking is very much a movement," McKellar says. "And Loosecubes wants to provide an infrastructure and a platform to support it." As more and more people join the mobile workforce, coworking offers changes in scenery, routines and working relationships that will make them more creative and more productive.
To capitalize on the movement, Loosecubes is working hard to improve its user experience, with eight of nine employees working full-time on product development. While its growth story has been impressive so far — 40% monthly growth in membership (there were 9,000 at press time) and a 20% monthly increase in total reservations — it's been almost entirely organic and word-of-mouth. Not a cent has gone to marketing or advertising while Loosecubes focuses on iteration and improvement. McKellar promises a few major product milestones in the next two or three months, after which, she says, the sky is the limit. With growth at current rates and a revenue structure based on taking a percentage of every reservation transaction, McKellar's predicting profitability by the end of 2012. Somewhere beyond that is world domination.
"I want Loosecubes to be the work lifestyle brand of the future," McKellar says, matter-of-factly. She's sitting inside the canvas Civil War-replica tent and, for a moment, she strikes the image of a general ready to storm the business travel battlefield. Then she sips from a bottle of chocolate coconut water and gushes about how great the artificial turf is underfoot. Maybe this isn't war, after all. But if it was, you can bet that Loosecubes is on your side.
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