4 Successful Companies that Started Life in a Coworking Space

Office spaces in premium locations, and around other successful businesses, can often be prohibitively expensive for startups and freelancers. Coworking spaces are ideal for such companies, as they allow expenses to be kept to a minimum whilst still being able to utilise an office environment and the associated facilities. It also provides the required space to run a business without the distractions you’d find working from a home office.

Check out these 4 highly successful companies that started their journey in a coworking environment:

1. Uber

In 2011, Uber consisted of a team of 8 people working out of coworking spaces, first in New York and then in San Francisco.

It is now, just 9 years later, a multi-national company, represented in 80 countries and has also expanded to Uber Eats, Uber Freight and Uber Help.

2. Instagram

It is rumoured that the initial iteration of Instagram was created in just 8 weeks, whether that is true or not, it started in a coworking space in San Francisco and grew rapidly from there!

Instagram was purchased by Facebook, just 18 MONTHS after it’s launch, for more than $1 billion. It now has a similar number of users worldwide and has come a long way since it’s creation.

3. Indiegogo

The founders of Indiegogo – Danae Ringelmann, Eric Schell and Slava Rubin – were inspired to create Indiegogo after their own experiences trying to make their business ideas a reality.

Beginning life as a crowdfunding platform for film projects, Indiegogo is now the largest crowdfunding platform globally enabling budding entrepreneurs to test and fund their ideas. Yet like Uber, Instagram and Spotify, it too came from humble beginnings in a coworking space in San Francisco

4. Spotify

Spotify originated in Sweden, however, it too utilised a San Francisco coworking space in its early days.

The company now has more 248 million monthly active users and it’s paid user base is growing by 31% year-on-year.

What made these companies so successful?

We believe we have a small part of the answer: It is often companies that collaborate well with other companies that go on to have great success. You can see this play out over history, and there’s no better place for collaboration than a coworking space.

Whilst we recognise that Norwich is no San Francisco (and we can’t promise that your company will sell to Facebook for more than $1 billion), why not give coworking a try and see how it can help accelerate your business growth? Give us a call to book a viewing.