Independents Hall Philadelphia

Indy Hall – By the Numbers

Filed under: coworkers, coworking, FAQs, From the Business Side, Independents Hall

Today, a longtime friend and observer of Indy Hall Imran Ali had a research piece published on GigaOm Pro about coworking spaces “by the numbers”. He featured Indy Hall as well as Fly the Coop, a Co-op coworking initiative in Manchester, UK.

This new article is behind a paywall, sadly. At the risk of being asked to take them down, I am going to quote  a few select pieces of the article that Imran wrote that I thought were particularly salient. If you’re so inclined, a free 7 day trial of GigaOm Pro (credit card required). I don’t get any sort of kickbacks on subscriptions.

The foresight shown by the coworking movement’s founders — codified in values of collaboration, openness, community, accessibility — readily transposes onto crucial financial constructs, such as transparency, pricing and membership. You really have to live those values to make coworking viable in a fiscal sense.

Imran does a great job of identifying how we parlayed our community growth into business growth.

Both IndyHall and Fly The Coop were only able to build sustainable businesses because of the trust (and loans) that came from early-stage community building[...] It’s this very trust that separates coworking from the more prosaic serviced office.

And, perhaps most importantly, he puts the business viability into perspective for people who are simply in this for the money:

Just as individuals buy into a lifestyle, coworkers are buying into a workstyle; the financial stories of both IndyHall and Fly The Coop show that, though margins are tight, deep community bonds make all the difference, both financially and socially. It’s perhaps not a business for an investor looking to make a significant ROI, but eminently suitable for those who wish to participate as members who also modestly invest.

As promised, here are the RAW numbers that I gave to Imran to tell our story. We operate transparently, so any additional information we can provide about any piece of this data will only be based on the availability of more data points. It’s taken us a while to get good at measuring our growth, so there’s lots of data missing that we’d need to spend more time mining for.

Let me use some numbers to tell a story, from our founding fund-raising to our most recent move and financial stabilization

$0 – Pre-dedicated location costs for 9 months casual coworking/jelly, social gatherings, and other community-building exercises were done on a budget of time, not capital.

$4625 – our projected monthly revenue based on membership projections within 6 months.

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23 – our actual number of members on August 6, 2007 (lease signing day)

2 – our actual number of full time members on September 1st, 2007

4 - our actual number of lite members on September 1st, 2007

17 – our actual number of basic members on September 1st, 2007

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$1675 – monthly membership-only revenue committed on lease signing day.

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$2325 – additional member-driven startup capital, from members pre-paying for 2-6 months of their membership

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~$10,000 – money provided by founder for lease security deposit, furniture, supplies, and monthly rent cushion.

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$14,000 – total money raised from within membership/founders to sign a lease, furnish the space, and cushion rent until breakeven.

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1800 number of sq ft leased in Old City Philadelphia

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$2,450 – monthly budget for rent, utilities, and discretionary funds

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3 – Months to breakeven/cashflow positive

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39 – our actual number of members on June 1st, 2008 (10 months in)

9 – our actual number of full time members on June 1st, 2008

5 – our actual number of lite members on June 1st, 2008

25 – our actual number of basic members on June 1st, 2008

$3975 – Monthly Revenue from Memberships Only

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16 – months until partner loan payback ($10,000) completed

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53 – our actual number of members on March 2009

14 – our actual number of full time members on March 2009

7 – our actual number of lite members on March 2009

32 – our actual number of basic members on March 2009

$5875 – Monthly Revenue from Memberships Only

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$3,633.45 – actual monthly operating cost in March 2009

$2.02 – approximate monthly operating cost per square foot in March 2009

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4400 number of sq ft rented in Old City Philadelphia for May 1st, 2009

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67 – our actual number of members on May 1st, 2009

21 – our actual number of full time members on May 1st, 2009

7 – our actual number of lite members on May 1st, 2009

39 – our actual number of basic members on May 1st, 2009

$7975 – Monthly Revenue from Memberships Only

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$8,700.53 – estimated monthly operating cost for May 2009

$1.98 – approximate monthly operating cost per square foot in March 2009

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$30,000 – loan taken from one full-time member

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~$14,000 – savings in May 2009

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$21,460 – budget for furniture, buildout materials.

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6 – Months to breakeven/cashflow positive

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83 – our actual number of members on October 2009 (breakeven)

26 – our actual number of full time members on October 2009

6 – our actual number of lite members on October 2009

51 – our actual number of basic members on October 2009

$9475 – Monthly Revenue from Memberships Only

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9 – Months to begin payback of member loan (<24 month payback target)

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The financials, as it were, are relatively uninteresting. You can see that we operate on relatively thin margins. It’s also worth pointing out that in 3 years, neither Geoff nor I have taken a draw from profit. Every penny made by Indy Hall is re-inves
ted in our members, our space, our events, etc.

The interesting numbers will take some more time to pull together…but they are the numbers that we believe are important. Things like

• Cities, states, and countries of origin of Indy Hall guests.
• Drop-in rates
• Drop-in conversions to memberships
• Events hosted and organized by Indy Hall and Indy Hall Members
• New teams/partnerships formed
• New businesses established
• New products (commercial and non-commercial) developed by Indy Hall Members
• Average revenue generated by an independent worker

And more. What numbers would YOU like to see?