Lifestyle

Guest workers

Visitng worker Deanna Paquette (left) chats with Kim Gardner of Flavorpill. (Tamara Beckwith)

When Brandon Sugiyama moved to New York from San Francisco last fall, the 36-year-old freelance motion graphic designer had a problem: He had clients and projects, but nowhere to work.

He didn’t want to operate from home, “with a desk ten feet from my bed,” or in a coffee shop, “with everybody wearing headphones and staring at Facebook.”

He could have bought a membership to one of the city’s many coworking spaces, but he likes “switching it up” and checking out different environments and neighborhoods.

That’s why a friend suggested Sugiyama sign up with Loosecubes, a young Brooklyn-based company that’s put a unique spin on the coworking concept. Instead of providing shared space in one location, it allows itinerant workers to labor at the offices of host companies that have spare desk space and a willingness to let freelancers make use of it.

The concept is not just to throw freelancers a bone and maximize unused office space, but to create synergy and professional connections: users and hosts are encouraged to get to know each other and share expertise.

The service has enabled Sugiyama to work in a dozen spaces across the city, from a commercial production company in Manhattan to “a shared table in the living room of some guy’s loft in Brooklyn.”

It’s a perfect setup, says the designer, whose work feeds off changes in “lighting, vibe, and the energy of others — being around people who are passionate about what they do.”

That’s exactly what founder Campbell McKellar had in mind when she started Loosecubes two years ago, after several years of working in real-estate investment. The idea grew out of two observations: The first came when she was earning an MBA from Stanford, and found she was more productive if she studied in varied environments. The second came while she was working in commercial real estate, and noticed that a lot of companies had unoccupied office space.

It was when she convinced her boss to let her work remotely for a summer in Maine, and found herself wishing she had a workspace outside the house, that she hatched the idea to draw on those two observations, and create a way to enable host companies to offer their extra space to freelancers, and encourage interactions that might benefit both parties.

“Loosecubes is a loosely arranged network of offices that people can join as a coworker for the day, but it’s also a loose network of professionals who meet each other in these physical environments and are doing projects with each other, starting businesses with each other and hiring each other for freelance work,” says McKellar, who’s 33.

Since it launched in June 2010, Loosecubes has grown steadily — and lately it’s taken a forward leap. The number of reservations booked through the site has grown eightfold over the past six months — and earlier this month the firm announced that it had landed $7.8 million in venture capital, bringing its total funding to $9 million.

To date it has signed up 120 host companies in NYC, spread to every major city in the US, and extended to 74 other countries, making it the world’s largest office-sharing network.

Most of the 13,000 users who’ve registered thus far are independent freelancers, but the service is also being used by traveling workers, and employees of companies that have downsized their spaces and are encouraging their people to work remotely.

Both users and hosts register on Loosecubes.com. In addition to listing their location, they also provide profile information that allows for a matching of interests and skills.

“We want to see if there are any ways we can work together,” says Kim Gardner, asssociate product manager at the Internet culture guide Flavorpill, which has hosted users since March. One guest was a specialist in computer interface design, who traded tech tips with employees during informal conversations.

The time limit for use of each location is set by the host: it’s typically one to three days a month, says McKellar, “because they like to mix it up and meet new people.”

Thus far, remarkably, most users have been able to find space without paying anything.

“We’ve had an open marketplace in which hosts could charge any price,” says McKellar. Around half didn’t, and as might be expected, “everybody went to the free spaces.”

Like many Internet ventures, Loosecubes has been gambling on the future by providing free service in order to build a network. This month, the company is offering a promotion whereby all spaces are free, but in July it will move to a subscription model in which users will buy a card for a small fee — perhaps $10 a day — that they’ll need to use if they cowork more than twice a month.

McKellar believes many hosts will continue to provide free space, arguing that they benefit by gaining new perspectives, expanding their pool of contacts and even meeting potential hires.

Set in an airy Dumbo loft with views of the East River, Loosecubes’ own office looks like a typical Internet startup, with 18 young employees staring intently at computer screens, but the space has one unusual feature, a canvas tent donated by a neighboring architecture firm. Small meetings can be held in it, and visitors can tickle their toes on its carpet of artificial grass.

Sitting on a couch inside, McKellar says New York was the perfect place to launch. It’s home to many different industries, gets a lot of visitors from overseas and temperamentally is a good testing ground for a communal concept.

“New Yorkers are skeptical and don’t always love to share,” she says, smiling. “If we can get them to open their offices, we’ll be successful everywhere.”

City-based hosts currently include hip Internet startups and design and architecture firms, but also such companies as Total Electrical Distributors, Davis Securities and Pet Dreams, a pet bedding company.

At Flavorpill, they decided to open their doors as “part of an initiative to bring new people into the office,” says Gardner, who notes that “office space is so expensive these days that if we have an extra couple of chairs it can mean a lot to someone.”

Following Loosecubes’ instructions, “I get them set up, give them a tour, and ask what they’re working on,” she says. “I can show them who to talk to if they want help.”

The benefit to the workers is clear enough, but Gardner confirms that, per the Loosecubes concept, it cuts both ways.

“We’ve brought in awesome designers and programmers and writers,” she says — not to mention a current guest who’s raising money so he can climb the world’s highest mountains, a challenge known as the Seven Summits. Having such folks around “makes our office day more exciting,” she says.

Big Duck, a communications firm that helps nonprofits raise money and visibility, has hosted about 25 visiting workers in the past two months. The office sharing idea “feels like a model for getting to know people in a different context,” says founder and principal Sarah Durham.

The experience has been mostly positive — though, she notes, “It’s an interesting social experiment predicated on a shared sense of values and appropriate behavior.”

Loosecubes takes pains to emphasize respect for the host company, and most of Big Duck’s guests have followed through, but not all.

“We had one person who talked loudly on the phone all day, and another who wanted to interview people in our office,” says Durham, noting that “we give them a desk, not a conference room.”

And she pointed to another issue: “If we’re talking about a project or a client, our staff might think twice about making candid comments.”

Even so, she sees Loosecubes’ ethos as “representative of a new era of sharing and collaboration,” and plans to continue hosting — not to mention using the network herself on upcoming trips to Chicago and Boston.

McKellar practices what she preaches, offering some workspace to outside freelancers in Loosecubes’ Dumbo office. And she’ll do likewise when the company opens a second New York office near Union Square soon.

She expects the growth to continue, seeing limitless potential for office sharing in a world where more and more workers are free agents. And she’s not afraid to aim high.

“My dream is a Loosecube within a ten-minute walk or drive of everyone,” she says.

SPACE RACE

A number of companies besides Loosecubes are looking for ways to connect wandering workers with new places to toil.

LiquidSpace offers a Web site and mobile app to connect workers with short-term space in not only business centers and corporate suites, but also co-working spaces and alternative spots such as libraries.

Users of LiquidSpace can use it to book a spot at a pair of Westin Hotels that under a pilot program are offering workspaces that can be rented hourly, by the public as well as guests. So far they’ve been launched in Boston and Arlington, Va., with plans for a wide rollout next year.

The global office space supplier Regus has opened workspaces in train stations in Holland and France. And in January they opened a space in a Shell service station near Paris — an arrangement that’s likely to be duplicated in Europe and will be considered in the US, said a spokesman.

Currently, Regus offers 40 business centers in shopping malls in US cities including Dallas and Atlanta. Visitors can buy a day pass or an annual membership.

For a familial spin on co-working, there’s Plug & Play, a new space in Austin, Tex., offering both desk space and child care. While Mom or Dad toils, small children get a “structured day care environment” (with a soundproofed wall in between).