My impression of San Francisco coworking spaces

I recently spent a day visiting every coworking space in San Francisco. I thought I'd post my impressions (since I have at least one friend that's also looking at spaces).


My Favorites
Five star recommended!

Sandbox Suites ($495/mo) - Pros: Cool environment and convenient location. I like how the lounge area is separated from the desks. There are varying levels of privacy allowing you to choose the desk that best suits your need (and budget). There's a decent conference and phone room. They also have an active event calendar. Cons: It's expensive. Especially for a private desk.

SVT Group Coworking space ($300/mo) - Pros: The people seemed nice and the price is reasonable. Cons: Coworking is not the main intent of this space. It's basically SVT's office space with room for a few extra desks.


Seemed Interesting
I wouldn't mind working from any of these places, but they weren't my first choice.

2431 Mission ($175/mo) - These guys almost made it in the "favorites" category. Pros: The desks in the public area are probably the best deal of all the spaces I saw. I also liked the atmosphere - very eclectic. Wether you do will be a matter of personal taste. To get an idea of what it's like check out some photos. Cons: Everything (including the fuseball table) is in earshot of the work areas. Don't think you could get a private desk and play your music without it being heard throughout. Also, the people didn't seem too friendly. This is probably because there was no designated greeter when I stopped by - everyone was busy working. Most other coworking spaces had someone who's job it was to manage the place and show you around.


CitizenSpace ($425/mo) - Pros: The place is dedicated to coworking and has been around for a while. Convenient location. Cons: They had the worst work/play separation of any of the spaces I looked at. There's only one big space that includes private/public desks, a kitchen, and a "chill area" with couch, TV, and Wii. The floor was concrete and sound would easily travel from one side of the room to the other. If you have a loud keyboard (as I do) everyone knew when you were working. There were no dividers between the private desks. I never saw anyone use the Wii - probably out of fear that it would disrupt everyone else.


PariSoMa ($350/mo) - Pros: Cute place and the people seemed nice. There's a lot of light from some huge windows, which could be a pro(not depressing) or a con (screen glare). There's a cool little nook where you could relax and read a book. However you couldn't take a phone call there without interrupting the rest of the office. Cons: Only marginally more private than CitizenSpace. Most people there aren't coders (which was important for me). This would be better suited for indie designers (hence the name). Also, the space was a little small and not as well equipped as Sandbox Suites.

Yuck
I would rather work from home.

Dreamfish, SF - Way too cramped (unless you like working while standing up). I'd have a hard time working here even if I was good friends with everyone else in the room.

iList - Drop in only. No permanent space available. At the time I saw the place they were moving to a new office. I don't even think they had available chairs.

HatFactory - There was just one big common desk that everyone works at. I didn't feel like I could bring my own keyboard/mouse/monitor and leave them there. Also I think some guy lives here.

NASA CoLab - Seems inactive / nonexistant. Their wiki has gone offline.

Last day in SanFran (Monday)

Today isn't too interesting - just returning to Charlottesville:


11PM (Sunday Night): Plane leaves for Washington DC
7AM: We get in, grab my car and head to my place. At this point, I'm freaking out because I have a Tax Midterm at 11, and haven't yet started studying.

7:30AM: Get to my place, load Omar's car (he drives home so that I can studyf or the midterm).
10:30: Get into Charlottesville just in time for my 11AM Federal Tax Midterm (yikes)

Well, everything turned out OK. It was a fantastic weekend, and I ended up getting a 92 on the midterm, even though I hadn't slept the night before. I was expecting a C or D, so I'm still trying to figure out how that happened...

SanFran (Sunday)

Here's the third update for my mom :) -

Sunday morning I took Omar Bohsali with me to have coffee with Trevor Blackwell. Trevor cofounded Viaweb with Paul Graham, and they're also partners of YCombinator. He also recently founded a robotics startup, Anybots. We had a great discussion about the Anybots' business model and what the robotics industry will look like in 10 years.

After that, Omar and I went back to sleep until the afternoon.

At around 6, we all headed over to Adam's apartment in the YScraper. The YScraper is an apartment building in SF that houses a number of YCombinator startups, including Reddit, Justin.tv, and Xobni (Adam's). The place is mad expensive, but has a great view.

Adam knew a great burger place down the street, so we all grabbed dinner there. The burgers were delicious, as promised :) Afterwards, we caught the subway for our flight out of oakland.

San Francisco (Saturday)

On Saturday Omar, Ben, & Ryan woke up early and drove over to Stanford for the Startup School talks. I stayed out pretty late the night before (at the YC Dinner), and as a result missed the first few hours :(

Recordings of the talks are online here.

During the talks - Omar and I had a pretty stimulating talk with Mark Zuckerberg about the future of Facebook.

After the talks @ Startup School, we headed out to SHDH, a hackathon "un-conference" where a bunch of programmer-types geek out for the day. Check out the pictures on on flickr.

We ended up helping the organizers clean up after the event (at around 3 AM!). It was completely worth it, though, because at around 4AM we were able to grab dinner with David Weekly and Tom Harrison. David founded PBWiki, a very successful wiki host.

San Francisco (Finally!)

This is another update for my mom, who's been pestering me for a while about my weekend at Startup School :)

Startup School was a weekend "conference" that we attended in the San Francisco bay area. The event's sponsored by YCombinator, and pretty popular amongst the hacker/startup circles.

During the trip we wrote (and took photos) of our experiences. I've decided I'll post once daily for the next 4 days (Fri - Mon), discussing each day's events at Startup School. Here's what happened on Friday:

Friday
2AM: Leave Charlottesville, after getting no sleep. I pick up Omar, and drive home to Herndon to meet Ben. All three of us leave from my place to get to the airport by 4:30.

6AM: Plane leaves, we're off!


11AM (PST): After 8 hours of flying, we finally get in. Immediately search for free WIFI, and some plugs (withdrawal sucks). Find local Paneras. Yay.

Afternoon: We spend the afternoon getting settled with Ryan Park, an awesome dude who's going to let us crash at his place all weekend. (Thanks, Ryan!)

6PM: We head over to the Startup School reception, while Ryan grabs dinner with some other schoolers. At the reception we bumps into some cool people, including a bunch of the users from News.YC (which I'm pretty active on). It was fun to put faces to names. The highlight of the night, though, is Dexter - a humanoid robot from Anybots.

Here's a video of Dexter jumping - which as far as I know, is a first for any humanoid robot:

My weekend in San Francisco

Well, my mom says the only way she can learn about my life is by reading my blog :) And, she's been pestering me for a while about my weekend at Startup School.

So here are some pictures of the trip on facebook: http://uva.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2090389&page=2&l=09a5b&id=1511936

Back from San Francisco

So I've arrived back from San Francisco, the Innovator's dinner was great. I've never seen so many respected professionals in one place.

I sat next to Nancy Dickenson, a senior director of eBay. It was funny, she was telling stories of Meg Whitman, and I couldn't help but contrast this conversation to my experiences on the East coast. In Virginia, I'll be lucky to talk to someone who recognizes Meg's name - and here I was having a conversation with one of Meg's good friends.