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The Success Of Small Businesses In Coworking

For years, traditional office space has remained a constant staple for multiple industries while coworking concepts sat on the sidelines, used mostly by freelancers and small startup companies. However, a little-known fact is that many of these well-known tech giants began life in these untraditional, yet successful coworking venues. You might be surprised by some of these businesses that chose this route including big names like: Spotify, Indiegogo, and Instagram. These now multimillion and sometimes billion-dollar corporations were merely small startups once upon a time who figured out the virtues of choosing coworking as their home base.  

Today, new tech startups are raking in the benefits that coworking spaces offer. As coworking takes the tech world by storm, new and innovative startups are opting for these collaborative work environments rather than traditional office spaces.

“Workspace is to the professional as shoes to the athlete, ” says Arian Lewis, the founder and CEO of Salt Lake City coworking space, Kiln. “While it used to be that there was one shoe for every use case, today there are hundreds to enhance the performance of the individual whose feet they surround. Workspace is undergoing a similar evolution. Coworking communities are designed to grow seeds to series b technology companies by giving them the right space.”

While there are many reasons for this success, a lot of it comes down to the opportunities created through collaboration, networking, and idea sharing. In any work environment, people bring their ideas to the table. A coworking environment is no different but with a broader variety of ideas being shared. This trend in the tech industry is inspiring many to follow in the footsteps of their successful predecessors. The following Utah business working in coworking spaces are the ones to watch.

Beta Boom

An investment firm that believes in the world of startups and entrepreneurship, Beta Boom strives to help world-changers build their dreams. While many brilliant minds go unnoticed by most firms, Beta Boom actively seeks out the best innovators and entrepreneurs. Working one-on-one with businesses, Beta Boom makes equity-based investments in the most promising early-stages of software startups.

“We wanted a space where we could just hit the ground running,” says Kimmy Paluch, Founder and Managing Partner of Beta Boom. “We chose coworking because of the amazing, collaborative community that they’re building. We have already found immediate impact by interacting with other companies that are based here.”

Not only is coworking transforming their business’s community building efforts, but Beta Boom is also actively connecting with members outside of their industry. These strategic partnerships are funding some of the most exciting projects of tomorrow.

Lambda

Many aspiring technologists don’t know where to start. With hundreds of options and plenty to learn, it can be a challenge to get up and go. Lambda School gives software engineers the training they need to excel in their field by making entry into computer science more accessible than ever.

As higher education tech pioneers, Lambda School is already well on their way to changing the industry. The for-profit online coding boot camp recently raised $30 million in a Series B funding round from a group of venture capitalists led by Geoff Lewis of Bedrock Capital, in addition to Google Ventures, GGV Capital, Vy Capital, Y Combinator and Sound Ventures.

Seek

Traditionally, businesses everywhere sold products strictly using 2D images. Now, augmented reality (AR) technology is changing all of that. Seek brings all of the benefits of AR to every digital screen using their highly-sought after technology. Not only are they connecting people to brands through a new app-less AR technology, but they’re also exploring infinite possibilities of AR through their SeekXR platform.

Seek’s pioneering technology has been used by Six Flags, Harley Davidson, and Cinemark, among others. They maintain that their development improvements were made possible only through the atmosphere used to create them.

Parachut

In the world of Airbnb and Uber, responsible consumerism is quickly becoming the lifestyle of choice. Every year, Americans spend $1.2 trillion on nonessential goods that go unused 80 percent of the time. Parachut is stepping in by bringing their creative goods share program to the public.  

This membership-based program matches camera equipment retailers and consumers up with products for rent. Forget about piling up your home with unused camera gear—Parchut gives you access to the most popular creative products so you can invest more money in experiences worth documenting.

Just as coworking startup turned business conglomerate, Uber became a sharing economy leader, Parachut hopes to do the same in their industry. As a member of a co-working community, Parachute is saving on lease coasts so their organization can scale faster than ever before.

Mainframe

As many in the tech industry know, networks are attacked by an endless stream of trackers, hackers, gatekeepers, and censors. This unchecked dominion leaves millions of businesses and people vulnerable. Mainframe is a platform that reimagines the web in a better, more secure way. Started over five years ago, Mainframe is singularly focused on helping developers build unstoppable applications that are fully stacked and fully decentralized.

This tech startup is quickly rising through the ranks with the help of the coworking community behind them. As they’ve grown, Mainframe has seen a few challenges along the way. But, with the advice and knowledge from others in the industry, they’ve tackled complex engineering issues and are well on their way because let’s be frank—changing the scope of the internet is quite the feat. Luckily, coworking spaces are just the place to do it.

Matt Larson, the VP of Operations at Mainframe, says that coworking spaces “have amazing energy, people who care, a killer aesthetic, and teams who are constantly going above and beyond.”

Localfluence

Creating buzz around your product is one of the biggest marketing challenges for businesses in the e-commerce industry. Many are turning to social media influencers to promote their business and motivate prospects to buy your product. Localfluence ties it all together by matching businesses with local influencers that promise to drive business upwards and onwards.

Setting up such a company in a coworking space was a smart move because tech entrepreneurs and marketing strategists are already naturally merging. This industry overlap is precisely what coworking is all about and how emerging startups will transform the world economy moving forward.

Brighton has spent small stints of his young career in technology at Google, Qualtrics and Divvy. Currently he oversees Community & Strategy at Kiln. He is passionate about solving tough problems and is thrilled to be working with the Kiln team to build a premier coworking solution for the world's brightest tech startups.