Schlagwort: Startups

WeWork cares about sales more than community

WeWork is more interested in sales than building a community. It’s increasingly for big corporates. And it shouldn’t be described as providing “coworking” spaces.

These are the words of Tobias Kremkau, the manager of St. Oberholz in Berlin, one of the oldest coworking spaces which is now expanding all over Germany.

They come as WeWork’s parent company this week filed paperwork to go public in the US, just months after raising money from Japan’s Softbank at a $47bn post-money valuation.

WeWork describes itself as providing more than “beautiful, shared office spaces” but a “community” and “a place you join as an individual, ‘me’, but where you become part of a greater ‘we’.”

Kremkau knows more about coworking spaces than pretty much anybody else in Europe. Travelling from Barcelona to Stockholm over two months with his wife in 2015, they worked from a different coworking space every day. 

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Founders flee to Estonia’s digital paradise

With 12 guides, over 600 tours sold and plenty of positive reviews, Arzu Altinay’s company Walks in Istanbul was going well. Then the business started to go very wrong.

The political atmosphere in Turkey started to change around 2015 and there was a a bloody coup attempt a year later. Tourism dried up. Altinay, who had been a professional tour guide since 1998, lost the vast majority of her customers.

When PayPal stopped operating in Turkey in 2016, even those still wanting to pay for her tours couldn’t. “I was desperate because my business died immediately. I’m a single parent and had no money coming in.”

Altinay knew that she had to move her company outside of Turkey. “The business was working, it just wasn’t working in Istanbul”. Read More

Teenager gründet Programmierschule in Nairobi

Als der damals 19-jährigen Martha Chumo die Einreise in die USA für die Teilnahme an der New York Hacker School verweigert wurde, gründete sie stattdessen Nairobi Dev School in ihrer Heimat.

Martha Chumo während ihres Vortrags auf der re:publica 2014

Martha Chumo während ihres Vortrags auf der re:publica 2014

Martha Chumo hat sich selbst das Programmieren beigebracht und hatte ein Stipendium für die New York Hacker School in der Tasche. Als sie nicht in die USA einreisen durfte, beschloss sie die Hacker Schule nach Kenia zu bringen und gründete Nairobi Dev School. Auf der re:publica 2014 sprach sie mit uns über die Umstände, die sie dazu brachten die Schule zu gründen, die bisherigen Herausforderungen, Co-Working Spaces und Startups in Afrika und wie man die hohe Arbeitslosigkeit in Kenia durch Technologie verringern kann.

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