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Venture X Dallas Campbell Centre Offers Flexible Coworking Tips for Dallas Digital Nomads
Dallas, TX , July 13, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Venture X Dallas Campbell Centre Offers Flexible Coworking Tips for Dallas Digital Nomads The phrase “digital nomad” has only been around since 1997, but it has become part of the booming culture of people who have found ways to work from anywhere. Coworking spaces are perfect for this group of workers. With a coworking space, digital nomads can work whenever and wherever they want. Because many digital nomads have a home base where they live when they’re not traveling, coworking spaces offer flexibility, comfort, and professional amenities. If you’re a Dallas digital nomad, there are strategies you can use to make sure your business thrives even as you enjoy the flexibility of creating a work-life balance that best suits your lifestyle. Here are five tips to keep in mind. Here are 5 tips from Dallas Coworking Expert & CEO Jason Bowers to make your business thrive during COVID-19. 1. Choose the Right Coworking Space In real estate, the phrase “location, location, location” is king. The same rule applies to coworking spaces in the sense that finding the right kind of space is critical to your success. Whether you’re a freelancer, entrepreneur,
Tech companies are ending leases and consolidating offices as remote work is here to...
SoundCommerce employees, with CEO Eric Best on far left
SoundCommerce
On a Saturday in April, several executives from SoundCommerce rented a U-Haul, drove it to their office in Seattle and loaded up the truck with stand-up desks, 48-inch monitors and various other gadgets and personal belongings. For two days, they traversed town, dropping the items off at employees' houses and apartments.
With the coronavirus forcing non-essential employees to shelter in place, it had been weeks since any the start-up's 20 or so staffers had worked at the office. It was clear they wouldn't be going back.
The lease expires July 31, and SoundCommerce CEO Eric Best said the company did not extend its contract.
"We polled the team and, for the vast majority, they prefer to remain at home," said Best, who co-founded the software company in 2018. "We're not making any decision for the long term right now. We're thinking about what do we do for the next six to 12 months in terms of maximum safety of team and maximum flexibility of the company."
In the tech hubs of Seattle, Silicon Valley, New York and elsewhere, many CEOs are coming to the same conclusion — real estate is not a worthwhile expense. Start-ups that never intended to be fully distributed are letting leases end or looking for ways to get out of longer deals, while bigger employers are closing facilities, consolidating space and exploring ways to provide workers with flexible arrangements and options closer to home to avoid long commutes.
In May, CBRE was predicting about a 7% drop in office rents per square foot from the first quarter to the fourth quarter. It expected vacancy rates to rise as high as 14.9% in the first quarter of 2021, up from 12.3% in first three months of 2020. Since then, the number of Covid-19 infections in the U.S. has skyrocketed, and states including Florida and Texas continue to see daily record highs.
Facebook, Twitter, Okta and Box are among the tech companies that have announced a more permanent shift to a hybrid approach. Many others are likely to follow as extended school closures or shortened days make remote options essential. Officials in Los Angeles and San Diego announced on Monday that schools will start online-only in the fall.
With that ominous backdrop and no vaccine expected anytime soon, office workers who can be productive at home are showing little desire to leave, and in many parts of the country they don't even have the option.
At SoundCommerce, the office cost was equivalent to the salary for one to two full-time employees, Best said. His company, whose software provides real-time data to online retailers, raised a $6.5 million seed round about a year ago, and now has more options with how to spend its money.
"We could forego the space and either buy additional cash runway, which is important for a start-up," Best said. "Or hire additional engineering capacity, which is even more important for a start-up."
'Pretty much everyone is doing it'
Across the country, Ian White is making a similar calculation at his early-stage start-up ChartHop, which develops software for human resources departments. On Jan. 15, White signed a six-month lease at a WeWork in Brooklyn for an office with about 15 desks.
A quarter of the way through the $1,200-a-month WeWork membership, White sent all nine employees home. The team quickly adapted to life on Zoom and Slack, and as they realized they'd be remote for an extended period, people started leaving New York for less cramped surroundings. White, along with his wife and eight-month-old baby, found an Airbnb by a lake in South Carolina, where they lived for two months.
Meanwhile, ChartHop's WeWork space "just sat there gathering dust and we're still on the hook for a six-month commitment," White said.
ChartHop CEO Ian White
ChartHop
"I asked WeWork for any kind of concession, but they offered nothing, not even the slightest price break," White said. "What they finally came back to me with was, if I was willing to enter another 12-month commitment, they'd give me a free month."
Instead, White is letting the lease expire. With business still picking up, he's continued to hire, adding seven employees since the company went remote. He's given his staff the option of working from home forever and, for those who want to eventually return to in an office, the company will revisit that possibility when it makes sense, White said.
Scott Orn said he's hearing these anecdotes from across his client base. His company, Kruze Consulting, helps about 250 start-ups with tax, accounting and HR services. Orn looked at the data of his clients and concluded that as of May, half of them had eliminated the amount they're spending on WeWork, while 26% had reduced their WeWork expenses.
Orn said his company, which was based at a WeWork location in downtown San Francisco, also let its lease expire.
"Pretty much everyone is doing it, who can do it," Orn said. "It was actually hard getting dates from WeWork where the elevators were not in use from others moving out."
It's an easy decision, Orn said, because "you'll be able to pick up super-cheap subleases at the very least when people are ready to go back."
A WeWork spokesperson declined to comment, but Chairman Marcelo Claure provided positive spin to the Financial Times recently.
Claure, SoftBank's operating chief who joined WeWork last year when SoftBank took control of the company, said that large enterprises are seeking more flexibility and turning to the office-share provider for space. Mastercard, Microsoft and Citigroup are among companies that have signed new leases in the past month.
According to the FT's report, Claure said revenue was "flat during the crisis," and that the company is now poised to start generating positive cash flow next year, ahead of schedule.
Industrious CEO Jamie Hodari said his company, which competes with WeWork, is seeing a similar trend, with employers including Salesforce, Pivotal and ServiceNow moving to a more distributed model. Hodari said that the churn rate, or the percentage of companies deciding not to renew their memberships, spiked in late March and early April, but is now back to pre-Covid levels.
Over the last couple months, Industrious has started working with clients on an even more flexible model that would allow companies to rent fractional space and pay based on usage. For example, a company could rent space for two days a week in one location and three in another and have a set amount of desks for those times and days.
"About eight weeks ago, companies said to us that once things reopen, people will want to go to work but no one wants to go to work five days a week," Hodari said. "There's a level of flexibility that companies are anticipating that we're working to try and provide. But it's pretty out there. It hasn't traditionally existed in the real estate market."
Industrious office
Industrious
Credit Karma, a financial-tech company Intuit is acquiring for about $7 billion, is in a complicated situation. The company, headquartered in San Francisco, signed a lease last year for 106,000 square feet across the Bay Bridge in downtown Oakland.
Some of Credit Karma's 1,100 Bay Area employees were going to start moving to the Oakland office in 2020, but the full migration was expected to happen over several years. About 100 people who live in certain areas were going to be allowed to stay in the San Francisco office to keep their commutes manageable.
Those plans all changed shortly after the pandemic struck. The company closed the San Francisco headquarters for good, allowing employees to come in and pick up essentials like medicine, bicycles or valuable personal items. Whenever employees return to work, Oakland will be the lone office in the Bay Area, and those who would have stayed in San Francisco will instead be able to work from home.
"Covid hit and we started to have to make some harder decisions around financials in general," said Colleen McCreary, Credit Karma's chief people officer. "We decided to make the call now to consolidate into Oakland. It was going to be something over time we'd probably be getting to anyway, but this really expedited that."
Still, Credit Karma has its six floors in San Francisco on the books, and the leases vary for each. The company is looking for ways to offload that space, which may mean having to subsidize some costs for new tenants, said people with knowledge of the matter who asked not to be named because the negotiations are confidential. McCreary said she hasn't been involved with those talks and isn't aware of the details.
'We'll play it by ear'
Elevate Security, a 30-person start-up with offices in Berkeley, California, and Montreal, let both leases expire in June, saving the company about $10,000 a month.
Robert Fly, Elevate's co-founder and CEO, said there are challenges to managing a remote workforce. Trying to recreate the water cooler conversation and figuring out ways to properly show gratitude for jobs well done have become important, particularly for people who thrive in communal environments, he said.
"It was a little rough in the beginning but now that we've cleaned up a lot of communication and collaboration, I actually think it's better," Fly said. He said that every day around lunch, the team gets together on Zoom for a 15-minute stretching session.
Elevate Security video chat
Elevate Security
When he decided not to renew the leases, Fly put the company's belongings in storage and created a spreadsheet with all the available inventory, from computers and audio-visual equipment to couches, desks and chairs. Employees noted on the spreadsheet what they were taking, and let co-workers know in a Slack channel when they would pick up the items to maintain distancing.
The equipment and furniture may eventually find its way back into an Elevate office. Or not.
"We don't have plans at the moment to actively search for real estate," Fly said. "I can't predict what the pandemic holds. The new reality might be we stay remote forever, or maybe we have two- to three-person office hubs. We'll play it by ear."
WATCH: The pandemic has sparked greater acceptance in society towards remote work
U.S. Rejects Most Chinese Maritime Claims in South China Sea
HONG KONG—The U.S. declared its formal opposition to a swath of Chinese claims in the South China Sea, in an unusually direct challenge to Beijing’s efforts to assert control in the strategic waters. Announcing the policy shift on Monday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo characterized the decision as an effort to uphold international law against what he called a “might makes right” campaign by China to coerce and intimidate its Southeast Asian neighbors into ceding their interests....
While You Were Sleeping: 5 stories you might have missed, July 14
Global Covid-19 cases rise above 13 million, with infections going up by 1 million in 5 days
Coronavirus infections rose above 13 million across the world on Monday, according to a Reuters tally, climbing by one million in just five days in a pandemic that has killed more than half a million people.
World Health Organisation chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said there would be no return to the old normal for the foreseeable future, with too many countries headed in the wrong direction.
"Let me be blunt, too many countries are headed in the wrong direction, the virus remains public enemy number one," he told a virtual briefing from WHO headquarters in Geneva.
"If basics are not followed, the only way this pandemic is going to go, it is going to get worse and worse and worse. But it does not have to be this way."
READ MORE HERE
California shuts down again as US coronavirus crisis expands
California’s governor ordered a retreat on Monday from the state’s reopening as coronavirus cases soared and the state’s two largest school districts, Los Angeles and San Diego, announced all learning will be online-only when classes resume in a few weeks.
California Governor Gavin Newsom shut bars and banned indoor restaurant dining statewide, while closing churches, gyms and hair salons in the hardest-hit counties.
Newsom acted as Covid-19 cases strained hospitals in several rural counties and as infections mounted in Los Angeles and parts of the San Francisco Bay Area.
READ MORE HERE
Pompeo says Beijing claims in South China Sea 'unlawful'
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Monday that the United States would treat Beijing's pursuit of resources in the dispute-rife South China Sea as illegal, ramping up pressure on another front.
"We are making clear: Beijing's claims to offshore resources across most of the South China Sea are completely unlawful, as is its campaign of bullying to control them," Pompeo said in a statement.
The United States has long rejected Beijing's sweeping claims in the South China Sea, aligning itself with Vietnam, the Philippines and other US partners in the region.
READ MORE HERE
Body found at site of search for missing Glee actress Naya Rivera
Rescuers on Monday found a body at the California lake where Glee star Naya Rivera went missing last week.
The Ventura County Sheriff’s office said “recovery is in progress” of the unidentified body, after a sixth day of searching for the US actress began again at first light.
Rivera, 33, is believed to have accidentally drowned in Lake Piru after renting a boat at the camping and recreational hot spot with her four-year-old son, authorities said last week.
READ MORE HERE
EPL: Manchester United stay fifth after Saints grab late leveller
Manchester United's Champions League qualification hopes suffered a blow after an equaliser deep in stoppage time from Michael Obafemi earned Southampton a 2-2 draw in the Premier League at Old Trafford on Monday.
United were poised to move up to third after Anthony Martial's 23rd minute strike had put them 2-1 ahead.
On the day when second-placed Manchester City's two-year ban from European football was overturned on appeal, meaning the top four will qualify for the Champions League as usual, United stay in fifth place on 59 points.
READ MORE HERE
Shoppers in England ordered to wear face coverings from July 24 to help reduce...
LONDON (REUTERS) - Shoppers in England will have to wear face coverings in shops and supermarkets from July 24 to help reduce the risk of a new pick-up in the spread of the coronavirus, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson's office said.
Johnson said last week that tighter rules on wearing face coverings might be needed but a senior minister - Cabinet Secretary Michael Gove - said on Sunday that wearing masks should be left instead to people's common sense.
"The prime minister has been clear that people should be wearing face coverings in shops and we will make this mandatory from July 24," a spokesperson for Johnson's Downing Street office said on Monday (July 13).
Britain has Europe's highest coronavirus death toll, with almost 45,000 confirmed deaths.
In Scotland, which has its own powers over public health, as well as other countries such as Germany, Spain, Italy and Greece it is already compulsory to wear face coverings inside shops.
The opposition Labour Party criticised Johnson's government for not moving sooner in England.
"Given the government's own guidance issued on May 11 advised in favour of face masks, many will ask why yet again have ministers been slow in making a decision ... and why it'll take another 11 days before these new guidelines come into force," Labour health spokesman Jonathan Ashworth said.
People who fail to wear a face covering will face a fine of up to 100 pounds (US$126) - in line with existing fines for people who do not cover their face on public transport - which would fall to 50 pounds if paid within 14 days.
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