Traditionally, society forces us to choose between working at home for ourselves or working at an office for a company. If we work at a traditional 9 to 5 company job, we get community and structure, but lose freedom and the ability to control our own lives. If we work for ourselves at home, we gain independence but suffer loneliness and bad habits from not being surrounded by a work community.
Coworking is a solution to this problem. In coworking, independent writers, programmers, and creators come together in community…
-– Brad Neuberg, August 9, 2005
May 4th is Locus Workspace’s 15th birthday. I haven’t owned or managed Locus for about 4.5 years, but this is a fitting time to reflect on Locus’s history, and so I was asked to write a blog post about its origins and how it has changed. I’m fond of the above quotation from a blog post commonly credited with first naming and framing the coworking concept. It is the most efficient expression I know of that describes the idea behind coworking that resonates with me. It also goes a long way toward explaining why I originally wanted to open a coworking space: that tension between the desire for (a) independence and freedom associated with working for oneself rather than for someone else, and (b) the common psychological need for workplace community, structure, and accountability that often comes with working independently. That tension is what gave coworking its original momentum, and what many of us were looking for even before a name was given to the concept.
That original meaning was also ignored or forgotten by many founders of newer coworking spaces that target company teams more than individual freelancers or remote workers and that give little more than lip-service to the value of community and the importance of facilitating a healthy workplace social and physical environment specifically for remote or freelance workers. Don’t get me wrong: there are a LOT of amazing coworking spaces. They are just often hard to find in cities as large as Prague given the marketing money behind the serviced office industry.
Locus retains that commitment to creating a healthy work environment and a strong community to this day–better than ever, in my opinion–and I believe it is a big part of the reason it has lasted so long (the longest-running coworking space in the Czech Republic) and continues to thrive.
So why did I want to open that kind of coworking space? The short answer is this:
There is a lot of context missing from that short answer, though. This blog post aims to fill out some of it.
The original idea of starting something akin to a coworking space began before “coworking” had a name. I had just come back after almost 2 years of fieldwork, collecting data for my Ph.D. in “The Committee on Human Development” (HD) an interdisciplinary department (mostly comprising psychologists, anthropologists, and biologists) at the University of Chicago. Although we were closely tied to the psychology department, unlike most psych students we tended to go off on our own for a year or two and do anthropology-style participant-observation to try to understand psychological processes within a cultural context. Fieldwork had been difficult (I spent a year and a half mostly in casinos, dealing blackjack, interviewing gamblers, and gambling myself). I was tired. I came back to the university with nothing to do but analyze my data and write up my dissertation. I did not have an office or a lab. I did not have an active advisor (we met once every month or two and what I wrote would be my own). I was finished with course work. Most of my graduate-student cohort were somewhere else. I was struggling to focus on the dissertation and the hard work that would be required to finish it in a reasonable amount of time. Like many freelancers working alone from a one-bedroom apartment in a town far from parents and close friends, I felt very alone.
There are four dichotomies associated with the struggle I was going through that together go a long way toward explaining what I was originally looking for in a coworking space and why I thought it would be valuable for more people than just me.
Odysseus was given the insight (thanks to the sorceress Circe) that he did have the capacity to listen to the sirens without losing control. He just needed to be tied to the mast of his ship while he listened. I had a similar–if not so epic–conviction that my capacity to work independently—and to be happy while doing it—depended on help from my social and physical environment. If these examples seem reminiscent of the dichotomy pointed to by Neuberg in his 2005 blog post above, they should. He had a similar insight when he wrote that “coworking is the solution” to the problem of wanting a certain kind of freedom and independence (wanting to be able to hear the sirens), but not wanting the loneliness and lack of structure, accountability, and community that goes along with that (not wanting to crash into the rocks and die).
The fundamental attribution error is the compelling finding in social psychology that people tend to overemphasize the influence of stable personality traits (the person or disposition) relative to the situation when explaining behavior. That attribution error links the person with enduring traits (I am self-disciplined; he is dumb; she is kind) and the situation with variability (I couldn’t focus on my work because I didn’t get enough sleep, he did poorly on the text because it was unfair; she brought flowers because that’s what people do when someone’s in the hospital).
As an aside, the “fundamental” attribution error has been found to be far less fundamental than originally thought. First, it depends on whether the attributions are about oneself or about others. Second, whether the error exists and how it depends on self vs. other attributions both vary widely across cultures (for a variety of rich examples, see Markus & Kitayama, 1991, “Culture and the self: Implications for cognition, emotion, and motivation.”) That said, at a general level, the error still applies well to most WEIRD people (people from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich Democratic countries; Henrich et al., 2010, “The weirdest people in the world”): the cultural group most likely to design and participate in psychology research, and also the group most likely to seek out coworking spaces.
Back to the dichotomy:
Of course, there are a lot of independent workers who thrive (without coworking!), but I became convinced that most of them thrived because they had created–or lucked into–social and physical environments that promoted that thriving. I began to consciously look for people, tools, or business services that helped provide that positive work environment for solo-workers so that I could continue to work independently but without feeling like it was a daily struggle. There must be hundreds of thousands of people in Chicago going through what I’m going through, I thought. That was the first time that I considered trying to start a business that both (a) met a need that I was sure was widespread and (b) was not available even in a large city like Chicago. But I had a dissertation to complete, and I didn’t have the background or–at the time–the desire to try to reinvent myself as an entrepreneur.
In 2007, a friend who knew about my search for services that provided a structured, supportive work environment for independent workers sent me a link to an article about coworking. At the time, coworking was still a nascent concept. By one count, there were only 14 coworking spaces by the end of that year. “That’s it!” I thought. “That is the work-environment model I’ve been looking for. I wish I had known about it sooner.”
I was still not confident the coworking model could succeed. My main concern was that coworking spaces seemed sort of like telephones or fax machines: there needed to be a broad network of spaces for them to have value. How am I–or my employer who might be willing to hire remote workers–going to be able to rely on coworking if I can’t count on it being readily available near where I live. I thought coworking could eventually be a successful business model, but not before the network existed. Then I had a conversation with a good friend (thanks, Rich!), who said something like, “At some point, everyone living in cities is just going to leave their flat, walk down the street to their corner shared office, and check into work 1000 miles away.” For me this was a eureka moment. There doesn’t need to be a wide network of spaces. If there are just enough freelancers who work from home within comfortable commuting distance of a single coworking space, why wouldn’t that be enough for that one space to succeed? All I needed was a reasonably large city for that.
In 2008, there were perhaps 10-times more coworking spaces than in 2007. That was partly because existing services began to rebrand as coworking spaces. Impact Hub (originally “The Hub”) had begun in 2005, but didn’t self-identify as a coworking space until that year. Many large cities had at least one writers’ space well before coworking, and they, too, began to rebrand as coworking spaces. The move to co-opt the coworking name as a marketing technique for standard serviced offices— “community washing” is a fitting label—had already begun. Many standard serviced offices—mostly targeting companies looking for turn-key, flexible, and affordable office space for their small teams, or individuals looking for a private offices—began to call themselves coworking spaces. The serviced office giant Regus is probably the best known example (Regus decided to community-wash their own business and rebranded themselves as the “first ever coworking space,” claiming the concept went back to 1970 when they first offered turnkey office space for individuals). I went on a road trip in the Pacific Northwest with two friends who were plausible business partners. We visited a dozen or so coworking spaces (including writers’ spaces and—tricked by the community washing—serviced offices), complemented by visits to spaces in Denver & Boulder, Colorado (where my potential partners lived), and—by myself—in Chicago (where I still lived) and in the Los Angeles area (where I had family). I still wasn’t 100% sure I would leave academia, but I was exploring the option.”
Not long after that road trip, my wife and I decided it made sense to return to the Czech Republic. My wife is Czech, and I had agreed that if we were not happy in the US after two years, we would move back. She gave it five years. I was toward the end of my second postdoctoral fellowship and had decided I wanted to leave academia. That decision to move back to Prague cemented my decision to start a coworking space. Prague seemed to me even better for a coworking space than the cities I had considered in the U.S. I had lived there and knew there was a large expat community, many of whom worked as freelancers and lacked a good social and physical office. A couple of good friends already fit that description, including Rich who I mentioned above as bringing me to that eureka moment. It seemed that a transient, international city like Prague might be in more need of a community-oriented coworking space than less international cities: transplants, especially across language and cultural barriers, may be in more need of the social benefits of coworking than long-time locals, I reasoned. This was before the concept of digital nomadism took root and that observation became somewhat obvious.
The time from moving to Prague to opening Locus went very quickly. Coworking was already beginning to take off by the time I arrived. There was already a small coworking space, the first coworking space in the Czech Republic, Coffice, located just off I.P. Pavlova (original home to the startup Slevomat, among other startups). There was another coworking space soon to be opened, also in Vinohrady. Unfortunately, that space did not last a year (unfortunately because it was a beautiful space with a caring, capable owner, and it felt to me like it “deserved” to succeed). One expat was already organizing successful jellies among English-speaking freelancers in Prague, with the intention to eventually open a coworking space (a “jelly” is an informal form of coworking at people’s homes or at cafes, often organized as a tool to start or complement a permanent coworking space). A group of Czechs had just bought the Czech-Slovak franchise rights for Impact Hub (what was then just, “The Hub”). Their first location opened in Smíchov later in the same month that Locus opened.
We had moved to the Czech Republic on November 1st, 2009, and Locus opened just six months later, on May 4th. My second son, Adam, was born on May 28th. It was a busy time. Sometime between February and April, I was buying a kid-carrier backpack online from a woman located Krakovská 22, just off of Wenceslas Square. The person who I bought it from asked if I was looking for a flat, and I said, “No, unfortunately. We just signed a lease!” We had just signed a lease on a long-term flat about a month earlier. “You don’t have anything that could be used as a homey shared office, do you?” She showed me a dual-use 106 m2 flat, and it became the first Locus.
Prices were intentionally set at half-price (1500 CZK, no VAT) and there was only one membership tier (Full Time). I ran it off of a Živnostenský List for the first year or two, and it opened with just two members and me working there (shout out to Jan Stojaspal and Florian Boucault). The 50% discount was justified by the idea that the value of a coworking space comes from the community. That was a good choice, and Locus gained members quickly, increased to full price without a hiccup, and was profitable before the end of the first year (though without paying myself a salary).
The choice to only offer full-time memberships and the initial price of 3000 CZK were made with the recognition that if everyone who signed up used the space during standard business hours to work full time, I would not be able to pay the rent. I was counting on a pricing model I had seen work with US health club memberships. Many good gyms had full-time unlimited memberships for under $50 (some for as low as $15) per month. Because the prices were so low, and because people intending to work out a lot often don’t follow through, these gyms could sell hundreds or even thousands of memberships without being overcrowded, even if they only had the comfortable capacity for 50 or so members at any one time. I was expecting something similar for Locus: at the prices I was charging, I thought people should join even if they only wanted to use it a couple of times per month. They could still get value from the community and events and from the knowledge that they could use it whenever they wanted to. I thought I could make a great profit selling perhaps more than 100 full time memberships in a space that could only handle, at most, about 20 members at any one time.
Most members reasoned differently. 🙂 Since a full-time membership cost 3000 CZK, they thought that should reflect full-time use. I was regularly asked for discounts from members who didn’t come every day, and many people chose not to sign up because they would not be able to use it full time. I explained that the price was too low for that, and they explained that the price was too high for something less than full-time use. My reasoning was not helped by the fact that other coworking spaces were charging only slightly higher prices for full-time memberships. I continue to believe that small coworking spaces like Locus tend to charge too little, and that members in turn expect to pay too little. That said, of course, freelancers and remote workers have the option to work for free from home, and any price can feel “optional” when that alternative is always available, especially for freelancers worried about their own bottom line. In any case, it quickly became evident that my initial assumptions were mistaken and that my business model would not work. Perhaps just a month after opening, the full-time-only option expanded to 10-day, 5-day, “Evenings & Weekends,” and Virtual membership. For the most part those tiers have remained.
Although I believed expats were a good target market for the kind of coworking I had in mind, the limited focus on English and on expats was a choice of convenience not of intentional design. I did not want an expat coworking space. I wanted everything to be bilingual and I thought the biggest market by far were Czechs (which was and remains true). Even though I could clearly see the value of coworking for expats, for me that value was in large part associated with helping expats integrate with Czech life and Czech culture: meet Czechs, learn the Czech language, start businesses on the Czech market, get access to local knowledge and expertise. A big part of what I valued about living in a foreign country came from learning about the people and culture. I also thought there was a large group of freelance Czechs who would want the complement to that: to connect with and meet and learn from English-speaking expats from around the world. As such, my initial vision was an entirely bilingual space, marketed as much to Czechs who do not necessarily speak English as to expats who do not necessarily speak Czech. I felt disappointed and a little ashamed that everything was originally in English and that all my marketing was to expats. It was a choice of convenience, and I intended to correct it as soon as I could.
That initial “failure” on my part was an early stroke of luck. I underestimated the degree to which expats were seeking community with other expats and the degree to which that would have likely been diluted with an equal focus on Czechs who do not speak English. I did–relatively quickly, thanks to my translator Czech wife–eventually set up a Czech-language version of the website, and I tried–never effectively–to market to a Czech audience. But the Czechs who joined Locus almost universally found it through the English-language marketing, and most of them found it because they wanted to be in an English-speaking, international environment. Many of them had returned to the Czech Republic after living abroad and felt reverse-culture shock and missed the international expat vibe they had become used to living abroad. Locus scratched that itch. A near equal mix between Czechs and expats was achieved in a way that would not have been possible if I had been successful with my original intentions to market effectively in Czech, and the group of Czechs who joined as a result were the best suited to serve as conduits between local and expat, and had the most to gain from Locus’s expat community.
“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
– Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
There’s a lot more to tell about Locus’s history. It’s expansion to a second space at Krakovská, then to a separate location at Slezká, near bankruptcy as a result of that second expansion originally not being successful, followed by the decision to close the original space because of both an unforeseen bad decision and an unforeseen bad landlady, and finally my decision to try to sell the coworking business at the peak of coworking hype when WeWork was valued at $70 Billion. I wasn’t selling to get rich: I just didn’t see a path to growth that wouldn’t keep me working as a full-time office and community manager without giving up on my ideal kind of coworking space. It just happened to be an ideal time to exit the coworking industry. I believed exiting well required Locus to be able to run without me. I moved to Ireland for a year. It was the same year COVID hit. WeWork nearly went bankrupt. Excitement about the coworking industry died. I came back to Prague still determined to sell, but suddenly at the worst possible time. Going into details about these events would be far too much for a blog post about Locus’s origin and how it got to where it is today. Instead, I’ll focus on how Locus has changed since Mathias took over as the new owner, towards the end of 2020.
I was extremely lucky that Mathias ended up buying Locus. Another person had made an offer and I had accepted it. We spent about a half a year before she pulled out. I was both relieved (because it became increasingly clear she would not be the right person for the job) and heartbroken (because it seemed very likely Locus would simply close). Mathias had already been a long-time Locus member. He knew how the space worked, and he knew why he liked it and what he could change about it for the better. He has skills that I don’t have and good judgment and a disposition that I don’t have often enough. Locus is a far better coworking space than when I left it. But it is far better in large part because it retained essentially all the good things it had before I left it, while improving everything that wasn’t good (or that could be better). In that sense, it fits that famous opening line from Anna Karenina above. It is a great deal like older versions of Locus, but only in the ways that made those older versions “a happy family.” I’m sure there are many things that can still be improved (I imagine every caring business owner is constantly aware of a never-ending list of things that could be improved). But as far as I can see, most of the changes have just been in directions that makes Locus a happier family, and that I imagine are common to similar, successful coworking spaces that seek a meaningful, strong sense of community and a great place for productive work.
So what has improved or changed, from my perspective, since Mathias took over?
I still work from Locus on a regular basis. I am full of thanks on its 15th anniversary to know that “my baby” is still here, and that it has grown into something better than when it left my hands.
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