I've been thinking about getting a nice large space in San Francisco, to use as a coworking space, or to run events out of. It'd be great to have a hub for the people I like, some mix of startup, EA, progress, AI safety folks. Some inspirational spaces include Lighthaven, Constellation, and the SF Commons.
I've had this idea in the back of my mind for a few months now, but recently the it's been gaining traction. I've spoken to some small startups and folks who seem interested, have engaged a commercial real estate broker, and am touring one place next Tuesday. But I also have significant hesitations about the whole idea.
Market resolves to YES if by the end of Q1 2025, I've launched a space and/or signed a lease for it. If I've made what I deem significant progress but haven't launched/signed any lease, I'll extend the timeline to this market to Q2 2025
Why start a space?
I would personally want to use it!
My friends in SF seem pretty excited to use it too
I keep inviting people to cowork from the Manifold/Manifund office and now it's a little more full than ideal
Impact: on priors, it makes sense that something like an EA/AI Safety hub ought to exist in San Francisco, where all the AI development actually happens, rather than Berkeley
I sometimes pitch this idea as "Constellation in SF", though I expect my space would be as different from Constellation as Manifest is from EAG
I like new challenges, and haven't done a coworking space before
The parts that interest me: enabling good work, community organizing, financial structuring. OTOH I'm not excited about interior design or day-to-day operations
Historically I've been pretty good at community-building stuff like Manifest, Mexifold
And I think I'm good at stag hunts in general, which "start a coworking space" is shaped like
It'd much easier to organize future events if I own a space
San Francisco is my home, I like it very much, and want to give back
Starting a coworking space is one kind of bet on the future of SF
The existence of a good space in SF should spur more people to come, too
Why not
Opportunity costs: I think this would probably take 2-8 weeks of my time up front (plus ?? ongoing commitment costs to me, depending on whether I can find good people to run it)
Even though I'm good at community building, I'm not sure it's what I was put on this earth to do
I'm a hopeless introvert at heart (though sometimes I conveniently forget this fact)
Coworking spaces are bad businesses, as far as I can tell
Nowhere near the margins of software
The upsides mostly flow to the tenants I think?
Maybe the answer is "charge more" but I'm somewhat allergic to that
(nb this is probably true for conferences too)
Many other event/coworking spaces have failed or are failing
E.g. Lightcone Offices, Atlantis, Solaris AI, Wytham Abbey if you squint
It's not obvious to me that SF Commons or Constellation are currently doing well (at least well enough to make me go "yeah there's no point in me starting my own")
My SF community might already be way more densely networked than ideal
My calendar already feels uncomfortably saturated with parties and other events
See Alexey Guzey: "i think sf will ruin gwern"
"Coworking" might be actively harmful (bad for focus, lead to groupthink). Famously, Paul Graham refused to offer coworking to YC startups
I do think the Constellation setup of "provide lots of private offices" might be good
Maybe somebody else will do it if I don't 🤞
I've been pretty happy with the service Lighthaven provides, and if they were in SF I wouldn't be considering this
Physical spaces mostly serve human users; maybe there's more upside in serving AI users
though, as a human, I like humans, and probably will for a long time
Maybe most interesting work in SF happens inside of labs, so there's less need for this kind of space
If you'd like to see this space exist, reach out to me (austin@manifund.org), or comment below! Some things I'd like help with:
Seed funding
I expect this would cost ~$50k/mo, though I do also hope to recoup a lot (or even profit) from running this, and return that to "investors"
Recs for great folks to help run the space
Skillsets I'd be looking for: interior design, day-to-day ops generalist, people with good taste and initiative
Interest from users who would pay for the space
Coworking tenants like startups or individual researchers; event organizers who like our vibe
Recs for locations
I'm generally looking around Alamo/Hayes since those are nice areas close to where I live
1,000
3.00We've had our letter of intent out for the Solaris AI space for a week, but no response; betting down a bit. We loaded a bunch of complexity and asks into our LOI and I'm not sure that was the right move for securing this location (but on the other hand, we did think we had a fair amount of leverage to work with, and I don't think we'd accept a substantially worse offer for this location given its various faults)
They've come back with a counteroffer! I can see the outline of a agreeable terms from here.
Still have a lot of parties to talk with/try and satisfy though (Manifund; owners; Solaris folks; existing tenants; potential new tenants), and really work through the question of "is this what I/Manifund should be doing"
Is renting an apartment in SF still ridiculously expensive? If so, locating a co-working space there could ultimately be a disservice to the people working there.
When it comes to location, I don't think the incentives of employers and employees align well. The employer benefits from the prestige and large talent pool of SF, but the employees would actually have a higher quality of life if it were located almost anywhere else. They'd have more disposable income (rather than it all going towards rent), and could even consider purchasing rather than renting, which has all sorts of long-term benefits.
SF may have a glut of office space right now that makes this affordable, but is it affordable for everyone involved, or just the decision makers?
@DanHomerick it's a good consideration! In my (and many folks's) experience, the bottleneck to quality of life is not so much how much stuff they can afford to buy, but rather the quality of the folks they spend time with. SF scores extremely high on this metric, which is why I and many of my friends choose to live here despite high sticker costs.
Employers are also generally willing to match salaries against costs of living; larger companies like Google even have an explicit adjustment for this, which takes out much of the costs of being in SF. And I believe that the SF opportunities pay so much more than opportunities outside (in cash, but also connections, career capital), such that it's very worth it.
@Austin Solid rebuttal. I don't think worker's CoL can entirely be handwaved away, but I'm glad it's among your considerations, albeit not very near the top.
Have you heard of the new Berlinhouse space downtown? We've been pretty excited about it although it seems like it's still up in the air
@Lydia Yeah it seems like a cool concept! Maybe flavored a bit more crypto-y than I'd like, but very interested in seeing how it goes. If it's running well I could imagine wanting to take a floor or two of that rather than doing our own thing.
(I also don't like where it's located on Market, though I also don't love the Solaris space)
@infiniteErgodicity It's not -- Newton is their old space, Solaris AI is the new one, it's the 3rd and 4th floor of 1680 Mission St
Some wistfulness reading the shutdown letter for Buildspace, who I always thought had a really good brand and was trying to do something similar: https://buildspace.so/letter
@JonasVollmer We're putting together a letter of intent to take over the space, at $34k/mo for 2x10k sq ft floors, for 12 months.
Sam Altman, against coworking:
Every time someone decides they’re going to build the next Y Combinator, the idea is always the following: “It’s going to be just like Y Combinator, except we’re going to provide free coworking space.” I always want to say to people, “Did you ever think that maybe we thought about that, and it’s a feature, not a bug, that we don’t have it?”
I think the single thing that has differentiated YC more than any other decision we’ve made is that we do not have a coworking space. We bring the companies together once a week, but that’s it. It’s enough for a community, but it is enough to build your own identity.
Coworking spaces have two big classes of problems. Number one, they are a band-pass filter. Good ideas — actually, no, great ideas are fragile. Great ideas are easy to kill. An idea in its larval stage — all the best ideas when I first heard them sound bad. And all of us, myself included, are much more affected by what other people think of us and our ideas than we like to admit.
If you are just four people in your own door, and you have an idea that sounds bad but is great, you can keep that self-delusion going. If you’re in a coworking space, people laugh at you, and no one wants to be the kid picked last at recess. So you change your idea to something that sounds plausible but is never going to matter. It’s true that coworking spaces do kill off the very worst ideas, but a band-pass filter for startups is a terrible thing because they kill off the best ideas, too.
The other thing is the average level of ambition and willingness to work hard at a coworking space is incredibly low. There’s this reversion to the mean that is not what you want in your life.
@Austin Super interesting! I guess he's describing co-working vs small groups working together. When I think of co-working I figure the counterfactual is someone working-from-home. That's one reason I am more confident about the EV from co-working
@Austin Huh! That feels insightful. I wonder if these costs outweigh the benefits. I could see it going either way.
@EricNeyman yeah the problems Sama highlighted seem real but I imagine you could work to counteract them. I would want to encourage both pluralism of ideas and a high density of great, ambitious folks (and I'm happy to sacrifice revenue to do so).
@Austin it's also plausible to me that research work is less like a YC startup, in that there collaboration is super important, and so coworking could be differential better. Cf the Richard Hamming quote on open doors
The current Solaris AI office seems very great -- it's already set up for coworking, very turnkey, the price and size is quite reasonable (10k sqft for $17k/mo rent, or 2x for both floors); it's one of the most convenient options, and I'm tempted to take over its lease.
IMO the biggest downside is location; it's halfway between Mission and Hayes, which is kinda in the middle of nowhere by SF standards, and somewhat of a commute for me personally coming from Nopa
One extra upside to the current Solaris office is that they've already built out a space with some great existing startups, who I'd love to have continue (eg modal.com is super cool). Though TBD if there's a clash of culture/wants between those folks and my vision for the place