5 years of betacowork prueba
[Tweet “Check out the stats of 5 years of #coworking at Betacowork”]
Betacowork Coworking Brussels has been running now for 5 years and has become the dean of coworking spaces in Brussels. We have a great community of members, the most successful coworking space in Belgium, the longest running coworking space in Brussels, and one of the references in Europe (thanks to the team’s participation in coworking conferences and initiatives around the world and to the publication of The Coworking Handbook, the manual that coworking spaces around the world are using to operate new coworking businesses).

Members

Betacowork was launched on a Friday at 6pm (it was the first day of the first ever Coworking Europe conference and it was taking place in Brussels). By Sunday night we had its first 5 signups, by the end of December we had 15 members and in January 2011 we reached 29. Today we have 210 members. In the meantime 1627 people have gone through Betacowork either as a member or for a tryout.
The highest membership of women is 24%, we started with 0 and have grown it every year 🙂

[Tweet “Record of #coworking women at @Betacowork: 24.1%”]

Benefits for the members

Out of these surveys we got what are the main benefits that former members got out of their membership. The top of the list are more professional contacts (47.2%), happier (39.2%), and better focus and concentration (36%).
Here are the results of the benefits surveys:

Increased productivity

32%

Better focus and concentration

36%

Better working habits

29.60%

More professional contacts

47.20%

More personal contacts

33.60%

More clients

10.40%

Worked with other members in a project

17.60%

Hired for a project by/through another member

9.60%

Got help and advice for a project

20.80%

More creative

14.40%

Happier

39.20%

No

5.60%

Other

6.40%

[Tweet “These are teh biggest benefits of #coworking according to the coworkers themselves”]
An impressive example is Cedrick Donckels, who has improved his revenue as a developer with a return on investment for his membership of 2500% (25 times ROI).
[Tweet “Return on investment of #coworking: 2500% !!! #roi”]
We also have a sour note: 0.8% of our members left because they were not satisfied with Betacowork. The top 3 reasons why members left? Moved to a private office (30.4%) (we like this one, it means we’ve helped them grow!), pause (17.6%), and mission with a client (15.2%).
[Tweet “Why people stop #coworking: move to private office, pause membership, mission with client”]

Internet Social Media & Newsletter

From the beginning we’ve put a lot of effort on our internet communication. Social media has been one of the top marketing channels for Betacowork. In January 2015 we started sending out our monthly newsletter. These are our numbers:

  • Blog: 318 posts
  • Twitter: 4249 followers, 7190 tweets, 748 photos and videos.
  • Facebook: 2573 likes
  • Google Plus: 249 followers
  • Newsletter: 2995 subscribers
  • Website Stats:
    • 102,815 visitors
    • 615,469 page views
    • 00:04:02 average visit duration

Reviews & Surveys

Our average review in Google, Facebook, Yelp and CityPlug is 4.9 over 5.
From April 2014 we standardized and formalized our surveys for current members, former members and try-outs. Based on the 419 responses received so far our Net Promoter Score is 97.4%.
We are really proud of the quality of work we do at Betacowork. Thanks to our customer’s responses and online reviews we keep on improving (and also to our daily interaction with them).

Companies

There are hundreds of companies that have come through Betacowork and we cannot list them all. Some of the better known companies and people that have benefited of Betacowork and power it are:

[Tweet “There are a few surprises in this list of companies that do #coworking”]

Events

We have been quite active in hosting and organizing events since we launched. So far we have organized 421 events that have brought together 6967 people. Last June alone we organized 34 events.
Some of the highlights of our events:

  • Startup Weekend was brought to Belgium and launched at Betacowork by Ramon Suarez and Leo Exter, with the organization of the first two Startup Weekend Brussels. Ramon was also the director of the Founder Institute accelerator in Brussels.
  • We host and sponsor Rails Girls Brussels, an event to teach women how to code.
  • It’s in our tradition to support the free and open source software and related initiatives. Every year we host international teams coming to FOSDEM (the biggest free European event for free and open source software), like the post-FOSDEM hackfest, WikiMedia, Mozilla Foundation and Gnome . We provide developers a place to meet and work on their project together.
  • Once per month we host the Brussels Ruby users meetups.
  • We launched Coworking Belgium and its Unconference in 2014 to bring together the community of Belgian coworking space operators and exchange practices. We are also behind the launch of the Brussels Coworking Week and the Belgian Coworking Week.
  • Some of our members live in the USA but come back regularly and support the community via office hours, investments and one to one interactions, like: Davy Kestens, Sebastien de Halleux, Xavier Damman, Frédéric della Faille, etc.

[Tweet “I’ve participated in these events. Have you?”]

International Initiatives

Betacowork is the official headquarters of the European Coworking Assembly. Our team leads the project: Ramon is the President and one of its founders, Stefania is the Treasurer.
We are part of the Coworking Visa, which allows our coworkers to work for free at more than 500 coworking spaces around the world.
Our team leads the Open Coworking initiative in Belgium, with Sara and Stefania.
We are also hosts of the Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs Program, Leonardo Programme and Erasmus Placement programme, which bring most of our trainees from different EU countries.
We are partners of the EU funded project European Coworking Network (Erasmus +) to foster sense of initiative and entrepreneurship among young people.
[Tweet “I love Coworking Visa because it opens the door to 500 #coworking spaces around the world”]

Team

We are currently four people working full time in the team: the founder, two employees and one trainee.
We also work with freelancers, mostly our own coworkers: 2 developers, Dutch and French translations (2 translators), 2 copywriters, an accountant and a photographer.
We’ve had 10 trainees and two of them became employees: Stefania & Sara.
[Tweet “The team at @Betacowork is awesome and I love #coworking”]

History

Betacowork was launched on November 19 2010 as a joint venture of Ramon Suarez & Jean Derely, in partnership with ICAB Business & Technology Incubator. The founders decided to include it as a separate business unit of Betagroup ASBL until they were sure it was working. Jean Derely decided to leave Betagroup and Betacowork at the end of 2012 to concentrate on his startup Woorank.com and the new company Betacowork SPRL was created in 2013 to manage the coworking space as a separate business.