According to Wes Garnett, Delaware is the only mid-atlantic state that does not have a coworking space. “It’s not just because no one has started it,” he says, “but because no one has even heard of coworking.” Much like many Philadelphians, Garnett sees a northern neighbor taking technology talent from his city when there are plenty of reasons to stay home. Though Delaware is well-known as a tax shelter for large corporations, the state hasn’t exactly been rolling out the red carpet for entrepreneurs, something Garnett and his partners hope to change through coIN Loft. “In 2007, Delaware was ranked 50 out of 50 for attracting entrepreneurs. The next year we jumped to 35,” he says. “Either way we suck.” The life-long Delaware resident, along with business partners Pedro Moore and Steve Roettger, is leading the charge to create coIN Loft, a coworking space in Wilmington, Delaware. The trio is anticipating opening in March and the space will have 17 desks available in three tiered memberships: basic (a few times per month), part-time (two to three days per week) and full-time. Members of coIN Loft will also be eligible to participate in crowdsourced client projects. The origins of coIN Loft – short for “community innovation” – stemmed from a October article in Entrepreneur Magazine citing coworking as an upcoming trend in the startup world. Both Roettger and Garnett saw the space as a chance to change Delaware’s lack of an entrepreneurial mindset as well as a way to attract clients to Verge, their Wilmington-based company that offers consulting services to early-stage startup companies. The business partners began immediately looking for a space. Something that, as any of the Indy Hall founders would tell you, should come only after a community is established, something Garnett acknowledges. The floor plan for coIN Loft. (click to enlarge). “We did everything backwards, it’s in our nature to be running really fast to the things we want to do,” he says. In researching a space, the group also came across a real estate developer shopping around a coworking space dubbed the name “Verge Coworking,” ironic given coIN’s consulting gig. “It’s like in school when you wanted to talk to a girl you thought was hot and she turned out to be your best friend’s girlfriend,” says Garnett. “It was like the Twilight Zone.” That coworking space eventually fell through, but that won’t stop coIN Loft’s urgency. The group just signed a year lease, and the group, using roughly $25,000 of outside investment and $25,000 of their own funds, and is beginning to renovate the space as weather allows. “In Delaware things just take forever,” he says of coIN Loft’s urgency. “People really want to see things change but most people just sit on sidelines.” coIN Loft’s organizers say it has a handful of verbal commitments for full-time members and has seen interest in the Wilmington community as a next step for the city finding its identity. The community, which has already held two Ignite events, even created an entire neighborhood dedicated to housing creative professionals. “If we could build the reputation of coIN up,” he says, “it will make people say: ‘These guys [in Wilmington] are just as talented as anyone else.” Every Monday, Technically Not Tech will feature people, projects, and businesses that are involved with Philly’s tech scene, but aren’t necessarily technology focused. See others here. Full Disclosure: Independents Hall co-founder Alex Hillman is a current sponsor of Technically Philly.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
TNT: coIN Loft brings coworking to Wilmington
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Fear is Contagious...Get Out From Under the Pressure
The topic of fear seems to be very prevalent through Wes and I's posts, so I figured since we are living in a transparent world I would give you a little bit of a personal story about our journey with fear as our copilot. It seems that fear is everywhere and is very contagious among everyone, even if you cannot recognize its presence, believe me it is not too far away.
Our journey began almost two years ago when I had just finished up my senior year of college at the University of Delaware, and started my working career at a financial services firm. It was at this firm that I met Wes, and within a week or so of working there, we already started scheming ways to better the so-called process to success. Now, its not because we just wanted to be defiant, rather we saw this process as something that may or may not create success for some people. It seemed also that this process was giving others an excuse to remain mediocre, and paralyzing them in an optimistic state, dreaming that someday one big deal would come that would catapult them out of mediocrity. It was at this moment that we needed to make a decision: should we conform and be stuck in the ever so contagious fearful environment or develop our own thing. Being it as though we are both very ambitious, we felt that conforming would just not suffice, so we began creating our own process of shooting for the stars. One thing that gave us a little encouragement along the way, was something Wes' dad had said to him, "If you go after the the big things and fail, you will learn the steps to reach the top, but if you never try, you will never know what the top is or how to get there." With this encouragement and various small successes, we became students of our industry and derived a process that seemed to get us into places and meet people that we would have never expected. It was the lessons from our time at that firm, that Wes and I will never forget and will carry alongside of us throughout our working lives.
So, not to soon after we started our own thing, came the time when we realized that financial services was not either one of our true callings, and that we were meant to do bigger things; thus the planning for Verge became our nights and weekends for the next 4 months. Now, if you ask does it really take that long to plan a business, my answer would be NO WAY. The reason that it took us this long was that (1) we didn't know exactly what we were going to do, and (2) fear and pressure were hanging above our heads. It took until the beginning of March until we finally mustered up the courage to quit our jobs to venture out on our own. I cannot tell how great of a feeling it was to clear my desk and walk out of the corporate world to become my own boss, but that feeling soon became HOLY $*@T, I am my own boss. I honestly don't think I got too much sleep that night, thinking about all the "What Ifs?", and the feeling of "What do I do now." Then I remembered this saying I once heard, "You should embrace fear or the feeling of butterflies, because that feeling is when you can tell you are on the path to growth." It is simple little things like this that I continue to tell myself along my entrepreneurial journey.
Since this post is to be transparent and talk a little about fear, I will give a little insight to how fear affects me to this day. To be quite honest, every step towards the goal of launching The coIN Loft have had their ups and downs. Immediately upon reading into the concept of coworking, I felt that this was something I needed to be part of in some sort of way. After finding that there were no spaces in Delaware, the decision became that Wes and I were just going to have to start a space ourselves. At the time it seemed like a no-brainer, however soon after reality caught up and I started to think is Delaware the right place, maybe there isn't a space in Delaware for a reason, would anyone in Delaware see the same value that I did by working amongst other like-minded individuals, etc. Then came the money part, this is a big investment in a business that does not seem to be very easy to break-even in. These thoughts continue to be in my head at all times, a lot of times depriving me of sleep, however each morning I wake, pumped to be one day closer to satisfying the goal of launching Delaware's first coworking space. You see I am more scared of the feeling of regret, than the feeling of failure. Both Wes and I are the type of people that want the ball at the end of the game knowing we need to make something happen, and we have found that this pressure and fear is actually our internal drive that will ultimately make us successful. The coIN Loft is our way of introducing change, and encouraging the people of Delaware that as a community we can make some really cool stuff happen, key part being that community is the catalyst.
I know this post has been kind of erratic but the point of what I am trying to say can all be summed up in a quote I thought of this morning: "Fear is contagious and sometimes crippling, but it is how you channel that fear that can ultimately make you wildly successful."
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Born Leader? Nah, But I Would Like To Think So...
For everyone who has read anything I tweeted recently, you have probably seen a trend/theme around the topic of leadership and that pesky "call-to-action" sort of stuff. I know all of that can kind of get annoying, so this time I'm going to be a little more light-hearted and tell the tale of Wes and I's journey towards launching The coIN Loft and my take on leadership.
To start, I'll tell the story of The coIN Loft idea. So here I was, taking a little break from work during the day to catch up on the latest issue of Entrepreneur Magazine, when I stumbled across the article titled: "Solo, But Not Alone." I decided that might not be something too bad, so I continued to read. As I was riffling through it, I started thinking about all the possibilities and then it just hit me, Wes and I need to start one of these "coworking spaces." I showed Wes the article and after about a grand total of 2-3 minutes, we started reading anything and everything that had the term "coworking" in it. Once we got through all the research, we immediately began typing up a business plan/proposal and financial projections for our very own space. Now if you ask me to whom we were going to take all this stuff too, I don't think either one of us could have told you at the time, rather we preferred to take the good ole' "fly by the seat of your pants approach," not because we are young and ignorant, but instead it was simply because we felt that this (launching a coworking space) was something that was very necessary for Delaware, and even better it was very much inline with our vision, through which we operate Verge. When adding all this together, we felt that if we got the word out to the right people, they would help us make coIN Loft a realty and a success, and everything else would kind of fall in place. Luckily, we have been right so far and keep in tuned for our future progress.
So lets talk about leadership. When it comes to leadership or being a leader many people cower to thought of themselves being a leader because they feel they might not have the charisma, or give age old excuse "some people are just born leaders,and others are not." Well, I do believe that some people are leaders, and others are followers, however not because these "leaders" are born with the "leadership gene," instead the people that become leaders are the ones who get the courage to make change. Do Wes and I think we are leaders, well we would probably like to think so, but we just see ourselves as ordinary people following our vision for Delaware, while gaining courage through meeting other folks who share our vision.
2010: The Year In Review
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Independently Working Together
And with cheap office space in short supply throughout Wilmington, it can be tough for an upstart to make the leap from armchair-entrepreneur to the ranks of the cubically contained.
But the coIN Loft could change all that.
It will be an open space where freelancers can come to work, 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week, without the hindrance of a long-term lease or a back-breaking rent payment, said Steve Roettger, one of the founders.
He and partners Wes Garnett and Pedro Moore are planning to open the coIN Loft, a 2,200-square-foot building located downtown at 300 W. 9th St., on Feb. 5.
There will be co-working space for 21 entrepreneurs who can each rent a desk in the wifi-equipped building for between $40 and $300 a month, depending on how much access they want to have, Roettger explained……..
read the article in it’s entirety here——>http://tinyurl.com/ykk8qbk
