THE PROS AND CONS OF SHARED OFFICE SPACE

Are you the hard-working, visionary start-up person? Still short on money to get your office?

There are thousands of start-ups running in India these days. And not all of them are an overnight hit to get their own office at the very beginning. One needs a professional environment to get cerebral juices flowing, in order to produce something productive and valuable. Hence, using your home as an office, won’t really work in your favour. Then where should one go? The simple answer to this question is coworking space.

A lot of start-ups are turning to coworking spaces at the beginning of their business. The providing of coworking space is in itself a very successful startup. But is coworking space right for everyone? Everything comes with its pros and cons. Here a few pointers regarding the same, which you may consider before choosing from the best coworking office spaces.

Cons

There are a lot of distractions.

A coworking area will be an amalgamation of a lot of other businesses alongside yours. You will be interacting with a lot more people other than your own team. It is a fact that not all interactions are fruitful interactions. There will be so many other things to talk to different people, which will definitely be a thousand times better than your own work. Though you can minimise these distractions by renting a private space, you will leave the space at some point in time. And you never know, the happy fellow you met on the way in the lift, is there knocking at your door, hoping to share a conversation, which might not help you at all. A startup requires full attention an immense hard work in the begging. In order to push your product in the market, you need to hustle harder. You, as a start-up owner. Might be with this mindset always, but what about your coworkers? Hence this will fall to your disadvantage.

You will be sitting right next to your competitors.

Having competition is a good thing. It shows that your product holds a valuable position and good demand in the market space. But this definitely doesn’t mean that you would like your competitors snooping around your work. Every star up is different in a way. That slight edge is what grabs the attention of the public. And you wouldn’t want to give away that little thing that separate you from the crowd. Hence one needs to be very careful in such a scenario.

You don’t have much of a say when it comes to customization.

Personal office space can be customised in whichever way you like. You can decorate the entire thing in the way that when one looks at it, they get your brand immediately. These things cannot be done in a coworking space. Though you can decorate it a little bit, it always stays as a reminder of you not having a personal office, but a rented accommodation.

Pros

The flexibility of the place

A lease will be for a long period of time. start-ups are really unpredictable. The amount of money you have in the first month, might either go up or down drastically. If it goes own, you will find it difficult to pay the rents and end up in depts. In this way, coworking spaces offer an advantage of month to month payment. You don’t have to worry about the next month. If you have money, you can re-rent your space and continue working, or you can just leave. At times the start-up requires a lot of traveling. You need investors, hence you go around the globe to find them. At that time you won’t be using your space. So you have options for hot seats where you have to just pay for the amount of tie that you spend in the office. Isn’t that a good option?

Ample opportunities to meet valuable people.

A coworking space will have a lot of new start-ups. Some will be really good, which have already attracted a lot of investors. You will get to interact with a lot of such founders on a daily basis. This can work highly in your favour as you will get to know about their investor, their start-ups, which might give your ideas for improvement and betterment of your own start-up.

You will be in better proximity to big players.

These coworking areas are an attraction zone for a lot of investors, who visit them on a regular basis. If your work is impressive, you will definitely be able to score some hefty investor in no time.

So, make a detailed and sound decision about what you want for your startup. Happy coworking!