While Bill Gates and Steve Jobs once started businesses in their family sheds, today young startup founders can work in coworking spaces right in city centers.
During President Obama's recent visit to Vietnam, one destination that impressed America's most powerful man was Dreamplex, a co-working space for startups in Ho Chi Minh City. Obama spent more than 2 hours touring the space and talking with young entrepreneurs, and made sure to praise this useful place.
Coworking spaces are a relatively new but highly dynamic business model in Ho Chi Minh City, considered one of the centers start-up major in Southeast Asia. The co-working space concept is viewed as an evolution from traditional offices and rented offices. Large, financially strong corporations usually build their own office buildings. Smaller companies can rent serviced offices. Meanwhile, startups often choose co-working spaces because of their small size. Renting an office for a company of only 5-6 people would be very wasteful. In addition, startups may grow explosively after raising investment, expanding from 3-4 people to 10-20 within a few months, so the traditional office model is truly unsuitable.
Ho Chi Minh City currently has numerous coworking spaces of various sizes, most concentrated in District 1, such as Start, WORK Saigon, Citihub, TheVentures, and Dreamplex… with average areas around 1,000m2. Rent is not calculated per square meter as in traditional offices; instead, different packages are offered according to scale and usage needs.
Coworking spaces are usually divided into two areas. The first is an open workspace where members of all companies can sit among one another and talk freely. Startups can even share experiences, learn from one another, and seek collaboration opportunities. The second consists of studios with private offices and meeting rooms in various sizes for 4 to 30 people, or even up to 100, depending on the startup's scale.
A Dreamplex representative said the project had investment of 10 billion đồng. All 35 rooms are currently rented at 10–25 million đồng a month. Shared space can be rented monthly or daily according to need, typically at 2 million đồng per person per month or 80,000–100,000 đồng per person per day. Private phone rooms, tea, coffee and drinking water are provided free.
Most startups working here are in technology, specifically software and educational or financial applications… Other fields include investment and marketing. Nongovernmental organizations also have offices here. Many companies represent new business models with a global reach but employ only a few people in each country, operate almost 24/7, and generate millions of US dollars in monthly revenue.
Mr. Linh Hoàng, co-founder of Circo, said: “The advantage of a co-working space is that companies incur no costs beyond monthly rent, with flexible rental periods. Electricity, water, security, internet and all other costs are included in the rental packages. The co-working model also allows space to be rearranged flexibly as a startup grows, something traditional offices cannot do.
The most important benefit of coworking spaces is community. Every week, they host events, networking activities and presentations of products and ideas… Because these are open spaces, ideas can spread, receive feedback and improve almost immediately. Nothing prevents members from communicating, even when they work for different companies or industries.
Young startup founders also behave very professionally in co-working spaces. There is no stealing of ideas or disruption. Although the spaces are open, privacy and basic courtesy are fully respected: no eating or drinking in work areas, no loud conversations, and proper care of shared equipment...
However, co-working spaces are not ideal for every aspect of a startup. Phượng, who is developing an internal communications app, says his company places only sales and marketing in a co-working space. Its 15-person programming team still works together in a separate lab because the app requires high security and technical sophistication.
Coworking spaces in Ho Chi Minh City are expanding at a dizzying pace. Circo, a coworking space scheduled to launch in 10/2016 in District 4, occupies 1,000m2 on one floor of an apartment building on Hoàng Diệu Street and took only four months to build. Following its first 1,500m2 space, Dreamplex is also completing Dreamplex 2 in Bình Thạnh District, covering 3.000m2…
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