CoworkAtlanta.com

Update: This coworking space is no longer available.  Snowcap Labs had to close its office at the beginning of October, 2008 under mounting economic pressures.  We have now joined the ranks of home office knowledge-workers waiting with baited breath for a dedicated coworking facility to emerge.  I’ll report here if and when such a space is created for Atlanta.

The ground is trembling in my city.  There is energy swirling through the air and pouring onto the streets.  It’s almost palpable.  Can you see or hear it, yet?

Can you feel it?

Atlanta Scene In Flux

With the loss of Appcelerator came the birth of discussion between entrepreneurs and investors for Atlanta, it seems.  Over the past couple of weeks, it seems that the community has swollen five-fold as new names and faces appear from nowhere in blog comments and tweets.  It’s as if this energy has been hiding below the surface until now.

Mostly we’ve been discussing Atlanta’s problems.  Jeff Haynie will prove prescient in his assessment of the Atlanta investment scene today as a chicken-and-egg problem: there are simply not enough great teams and projects in Atlanta currently to soak up the kind of capital that the VCs would like to be spending.

Haynie also offers guidance.  He essentially says that we need to iterate our teams by starting up, failing, reorganizing into better teams, and running back up the hill.  And we need time for this cycle to play out over and over again, many times.  Haynie says it will take 6-8 years to really build a full-fledged, fully-funded, entrepreneurial scene.

I am probably preaching to the choir when I tell you that there are many amongst us who don’t want to hear time-frames like that: those of us who are sweating, bleeding, and fighting every day to follow our own (unique and beautiful) dreams in Atlanta.  Our dreams of “making it” have no such waiting involved and no such “move to California” options.  No, we are living those dreams here and now (even if they aren’t entirely beautiful, yet…)

Of course, we are also the group of people who will forge ahead whether investors exist or not. Indeed, we don’t necessarily care if the Atlanta scene ever gets “fully funded”, we really just want to work and feel like what we are doing is meaningful.

And we’re beginning to self-organize…

Emergence of Atlanta Coworking?

There seems to be a gathering head of steam around the idea of a dedicated coworking space in Atlanta, and i think this is a stellar idea.  Clearly it would be fallacy to look to coworking as a panacea here, but there are a number of ways in which it would directly help to crack our chicken-and-egg problem, as well as please us hippies with our fingers in our ears:

• failing faster
• cross-pollenation of teams
• quantity and quality of startups rises faster
• higher visibility to investors (those that care to notice)
• community gets physically embodied, ie, something to rally around

Indeed, during our recent burst of enlightened discussion, it has become apparent that many people are excited about this possibility.  Wei Yang is particularly vehement, going so far as to admit that he would be willing to rearrange his personal life to make use of such a space.  That’s the spirit!

So, it sounds like there are a lot of would-be coworkers around town, just itching to be let out.  This has us wondering, is it time to “strike while the iron is hot?”

Midtown Is Expensive, Norcross Is Distant

Of course it’s not that simple.

Creating a real, dedicated space that actually generates the aforementioned value is going to take work and, at some point, capital.  But we’re also seeing a lot of energy from some would-be Space Catalysts, with a handful of grassroots initiatives getting started that may eventually give way to some excellent early coworking facilities around town.

To me, however, many of the ideas are still sounding a bit unrealistic.  A short list:

• having a coffee shop integrated
• having sponsors
• having amazing training rooms/conference rooms/couches/private desks/[your pet feature here]
• expecting to draw dozens of paying heads overnight
• location is a deal-breaker for most (the Norcross-Midtown dichotomy)

Let me quickly backpedal and say that all of those ideas are great: we really do want to plan for our ideal space! Goals are just dreams with deadlines, after all.  But these are the kinds of things that can’t happen today, they take time.

One of those space catalysts, Sanjay Parekh, recently issued some open advice to the community:

…you need to start doing what you’re saying they aren’t doing - giving back time to other entrepreneurs.  …EVERY SINGLE ONE OF YOU needs to give some time to your fellow entrepreneurs.  I don’t care if you’re just launching your company or if you’ve had a 9 figure exit you need to start giving back starting NOW.

Opening of the Lab

We couldn’t agree more, Sanjay!  Our record and reputation stand for themselves here at Snowcap Labs, and if you aren’t familiar with us you shouldn’t have to ask very far to find someone whom we’ve helped (or been helped by.)  It’s part of our “corporate culture” you could say (though i use both terms loosely.)

So, in the interest of working towards an amazing coworking space, in the interest of helping others, and in the interest of doing it NOW, we’ve decided that the way forward is kind of insultingly obvious to us (as I assume my next sentence is to you, by now): We’re opening the Lab as a dedicated, interim coworking space.

Since March, we’ve been paying rent and working out of a simple space in order to save us from the work-from-home blues.  We are also radically more productive when we work together (of course.)  We got a place on the cheap with a sweetheart deal in an amazing location, and we haven’t looked back since.  We’ve often joked about being able to fit a small call center inside our walls if we needed to, but the recent chatter has really made us look at all that extra space in a different way.

So what are we talking about here?  What does this space have to offer?  Here’s a quick list of amenities:

• central location, Midtown-Buckhead accessible
• no parking problems
• Lab amenities: land-line, dedicated fax machine, wireless internet, full kitchen, full bathroom, copious whiteboard space, lots of natural sunlight
• walkable amenities: Office Depot, Publix, Starbucks, Panera (dozens more)
• low cost, easy break-even (we already pay for it today)
• no barriers to entry: we handle the lease and we don’t require legal fluff, just grab a desk and get to work
• no barriers to exit: any coworker can leave any time, and we can fold the entire space in an instant when a new facility is finally born
• 3(+) insanely intelligent, radically diverse brains waiting to engage you and your startup plans

All that said, this space is not huge or luxurious.  We can comfortably get another 3-5 people in here, and then some room for a few occasional floaters.

I realize the details aren’t so concrete right now, and that is by design.  Today’s post is just to officially announce the space, but we’ll publish maps, photos, a video tour, pricing information (it’s cheap!), and the first desk assignments (zomg, who is signed up?!?!?) very soon.

So be sure to contact us if you’re interested in being a part of this thing.  We won’t let any in who bites (too hard, anyway.)

What We Are Really Working Towards

Let’s be clear about this:  we don’t want to take absolute control of coworking in Atlanta; far from it!  This is an attempt to start moving the bar incrementally.  The ultimate goal is to get ourselves into some truly awe-inspiring space.  The goal today is to prove that Atlanta’s entrepreneurs are ready to grow up and work together by simply doing it.

We want to end up in a space that transcends all of the issues we bicker about today.  A space that would remove all concern about investment capital not knowing about your project, because anyone worth a damn can hop over to the space and see dozens of Atlanta tech startups under development at any time.  A space that would provide an incubator for YCombinator-style investments.  A space where you can get help on virtually any technology topic because of all the talent in the room.  A place to meet your next developer, artist, copy-writer, or investor.

Our proposition today doesn’t constitute very many of those things, and it doesn’t seek to.  It simply shows that there is always an alternative, if you’re willing to look and work for one.

Let’s work together on this!