Everyone comes to New York to make it big. If you are going out on your own and are looking to surround yourself with talented people in a collaborative environment, co-working is your best option. For other cities check out our list of 64 Co-working Spaces Every Entrepreneur Must Know, from our list of Top Cities for Young Entrepreneurs…
The spaces on this list are generally not incubators like General Assembly and Dogpatch Labs who’s focus is to mentor companies and have a extremely selective admission process. Check out our rankings of Top Co-Working spaces in NYC…
The Fueled Collective
A founding member of General Assembly, Rameet Chawla of Fueled, set out to create his own coworking space in NYC in 2010. Located atop the historic Prince Building in SoHo, the Fueled Collective boasts cool features like free snacks, drinks, kitchen, ping pong table, unlimited conference room access and a cool view of Foursquare’s office from an interior balcony. The Collective is home to over 30 tech related startups and space is rented by the desk monthly.
WeWork Labs
Over the past two years, WeWork has taken an enormous amount of space in New York City, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Each location has a slightly different theme to it, Midtown is slightly more corporate, in Meatpacking you are likely to run into someone in the nightlife industry, and in the original SoHo space you’ll find lots of media and fashion companies.
Now, WeWork is making bold moves, taking 75,000 square feet of space on the west side of Soho. The location isn’t ideal, and their process to get in is selective. The other WeWork spaces don’t have overwhelmingly-collaborative communities, but the Labs is slowly making this happen. What WeWork does well is the little things–conference room bookings, accepting member’s packages, and making operations run smoothly.
Wix Lounge
What’s not to love about free. This space is sponsored by Wix Website Builder and is a great place to pop into when you need to crank out work near Union Square. The space certainly has a freelance / just started my business feel. The demographic is very young. The staff is super friendly and you are allowed to take calls, sit at tables with friends, and talk as loud as you’d like. We even found our recent interview with the Adventure Project when we were hanging at Wix.
If you are looking for a super serious place to work, than we suggest you find a dedicated space, but if you want to hang from 9-5, get their early to claim your seat. In the evenings they have some really good events including a recent fireside chat with the founders of Tough Mudder.
NYU Polytech Incubator
This workspace is branded as an incubator and is a collaboration between New York City, and the Polytechnic Institute of New York. It looks like NYU Poly will be taking more space near their Varick Street location and space near their current DUMBO location.
This space is particularly impressive because it hosts some big time leaders in the New York Tech scene like Graham Lawlor from Ultra Light Startups, Charlie O’Donnell of Brooklyn Bridge Ventures, and Owen Davis of NYC Seed. They also have graduates like Pixable who have raised $6.1million in venture funding.
Green Desk
As Brooklyn as it gets, Green Desk is at the heart of the Brooklyn tech scene. Downstairs is the Loft, host of the Digital Dumbo events and is a great pre-war style event space.
This New York City co-working space is focused on being environmentally conscious, serving organic coffee and implementing their bike rental system. Downtown Brooklyn, and Greenpoint locations are also very cool and say they are an “office space for treehuggers.” This is where the WeWork founders got their start.
New Work City
NWC is the grandaddy of co-working spaces in New York City. The Mayor of New Work City Tony Bacigalupo does a great job curating the community and really believes in their mission to come up with solutions for those who are self employed. They have classes for female hackers, and even break into Turntable.fm dance parties at night.
The space is a bit dark (maybe for hackers) but everyone is very friendly and you get access to full screen computer monitors. NWC has lots of charm in their loft over Canal and Broadway.
The Hive at 55
Sponsored by the Downtown Alliance and Mayor Bloomberg’s initiative to give a boost to NYC Startups, this co-working space is located in the Financial District. We don’t think of startups being in FiDi very often, but this would be a killer spot to start your Fintech company. There are a million lunch / coffee spots in this pedestrian village steps from the New York Stock Exchange.
The space’s manager Brian Difeo is an all around good guy and does a nice job staying in the loop with the startup scene. They also try to bring some more creativity in the space with local artists displaying their paintings on the walls.
Honorable Mention:
Brooklyn Creative League – Affordable, green shared workspace, office amenities, and a community of professional colleagues.
