Coworking can change the world: Amarit Charoenphan at TEDxChiangMai 2013

Amarit Charoenphan helps people realize their dreams and become more successful startups, entrepreneurs, and freelancers through the best coworking spaces, as well as events, education and media.

Good morning

Just kidding, good evening!

Ladies and gentlemen, Tedsters

My name is Amarit Charoenphan

the cofounder & CEO of HUBBA Co., Ltd

with the first coworking space

in Thailand for startups,
creatives and freelancers.

And today I’d like to share with you

one very simple message

I believe that

coworking can change,

can and will change the world.

And I like you to be
part of that movement,

So, how did coworking begin in Thailand

and what is a coworking space?

So, for me the journey towards

building the whole coworking movement

is essentially trying…me trying to solve

a personal, very painful situation,

from a house that
was flooded in October 2011

and I had to move out to Pattaya.

So…like most people,

me and my brother, we started working,

of course, at a house.

We rented this small house in Hialeah,

that includes 13 dogs,

all the stuff we brought over from Pattaya,

a very nagging mom

and just general mayhem
with no wifi and 3G, imagine that!

And we tried to start
a business at that house,

and ok, at first, of course,
it's sort of works

it's the quickest office
you’ll ever get to in your life.

You just get up and go,

it's also the most cost-efficient

if you're living with your parents.

And also it's comfortable

if you're working from your bed
or in your underwear.

Fortunately I do not have pictures of me

working in my underwear!

But, more importantly is that

we soon found out that

if you're working from your homes,

you’ll get the feeling that

it’s just not a place to start anything.

Whether you become lonely, bored

or generally demotivated

and the place is really not suited

for you to meet with investors,

teams, your clients and your suppliers.

Then once you throw in your pets

or you have wives, kids,

visiting relatives and 13 dogs,

it just becomes too much.

So like most people, we just said,

ah…this isn’t going to work,

so where do we go?

So we went to look around
for the best coffee

and the best café in town.

And we searched far and wide
and we love coffee

and we craved it after a while.

Also we just love
the energy and buzz of seeing...

you know...people,

especially good-looking people

working at the café.

And initially it sort of worked as well.

But, you soon found out that cafés

were never meant to be

ah… office substitute.

For a very good reason:
you're paying the rent

with 2 cups of coffee a day,

if you don’t drink,

the owner starts looking at you

and getting pissed off

Then, after a while,

the power socket is hard to find,

the chairs are uncomfortable,

the light is dim,

and then, all the tourists
from everywhere start coming,

and eventually, you realize that

this is too much distraction.

And, after a while,

you just find out that,

you know, this coffee shop

has one very big drawback:

one I just found out
in a very hard way!

It's that, I had diarrhea,

I had to pack all my stuff in my bag,

put everything together,
run to the toilet,

and then it’s locked!

Somebody was inside!

And then like...No, I know It

I didn't do it on my pants

There was the lady's room on the side.

So what is there to do
for new entrepreneurs?

Essentially, there’s…

it's the house and the café

just didn’t really work,

but, we couldn’t afford for an office

or rent one of those service offices.

So, there has to be a better way

And there is!

Which is this mega trend of coworking,

which is working out for
a hundred thousand people

across the world in
over 3,000 spaces worldwide

and we read all these articles and said,

this is so awesome

but none of this exists in Thailand

So if there was one in Thailand,

then I would pay money
to go and use it.

And, it’s working out
for so many people

that it's actually,
fundamentally changing

the way we work and for the better.

So what is coworking space?

A lot of you would say,

Yes, it’s basically a whole bunch
of independent professionals

coming together to share
a facility that has

all the stuff you find
in a really nice office.

But that’s the simplistic definition

that only describes the tangible aspects
of a coworking space

whereas I’d like to see coworking

as a concept that is a verb
and not a noun.

It's the way of working,

not actually a static place,

but also where 3 COs

in the word “coworking” converge:

Cooperation, Collaboration, Community.

That’s where our generation of millennials

and generation Y and people after us

want from work space

a service, a relationship... a community

So, back to my story.

I came back from Pattaya and

I thought this was the big…

very big pain that I want to solve

and I really wanted to work at

a coworking space

There’s none in Thailand,

I've never been to one,

never did any market research,

but we knew

there were more people

going through the same pain as me,

and not just about diarrhea,

but just about working;

so we realized that O.K.

We’re just gonna build it

and we found this really beautiful house

Actually it’s very ugly right now,

but in 6 months,

we turned it into this!

We basically put everything

that you find in a really nice office

and more, and shared it
with everyone else.

You know,

beautifully decorated work space,

fast Wi-Fi, a lot of books,

shared water, coffee, a printing service,

meeting rooms, everything,

even a trampoline in this garden.

However, all of that is very affordable

for the budget-conscious entrepreneur

and freelancer and at the same time,

so well-managed that

our members just focus on their work

and not actually
on the workspace or managing.

So we thought that people love us

for building this,

that they’ll kiss my hands and say,

"Oh, shut up and take my money.

Oh, thank you bringing
coworking to Thailand."

But, of course,

that’s a fairytale

and then, the reality is that,

in the first months,

we had 1 member.

And we were like, what is going on?

So we were immediately
so close to failure.

I spent millions on this space,

and built it, nobody…you know

everybody came

the investors, media and everyone...

They liked it, but nobody really signed up

Nobody really signed up,

so I realized something was amiss

and asking enough questions,
I realized that

people just found coworking
as a culture so new

that they didn’t know
what was the value

that they were getting out of the space,

and that they didn't know

whether it was more valuable

above and beyond, you know,

just a nice office,

but why should they be there

instead of a house or cafe,

realizing both on to one word:

community.

Community is the lifeblood,

the…what makes
coworking space so addictive

because community is what

gets my members
and everyone that I know

up from bed traveled far and wide

to come to this space

and pay me to work

because they find that

the experience of working with

awesome like-minded individuals

side by side, every day,

sharing coffee and conversation,

becoming friends,

starting to help, share, learn

and collaborate with one another

is so invaluable, so hard to find

to the point that, you know,

entrepreneurship is so hard for them,

freelancing is so hard

for them for the first time

that they believe that

if they can work with somebody else

the journey is much more fun and valuable.

So, finding that out,

we focus on communities,

making the space fun and friendly

but also adding value where we can

with events, activities, and workshops,

like this event,

start on the weekend, 54 hours straight,

straight complete strangers come together

to do a start-up business

and pitch to investors.

They're so well received

that 200 people showed up, you know

in our the latest event

and our latest conference

for the technology star vehicle system

attracted 400 people

and we filled our entire auditorium.

So, who are all these people

that work out of these spaces?

And, where do they come from?

and the events as well

So, essentially

we’ve met so many
different types of people,

the sheer diversity is amazing.

It's not just start-ups and
creatives and freelancers

but I’ve met politicians and lawyers

and yoga masters and painters

and corporate warriors and nonprofit people,

social entrepreneurs, actors...

Actually, I had one really
nice member recently

who used to be homeless
in New York, in the States,

learned how to become a DJ,

and one...one day she decided

she's just gonna fly to Thailand

and she started writing about

displaced people
and becoming really famous

about refugee issues.

So basically, anybody can work

out of a coworking space;

anybody in this room,

all of you can work out there

because essentially,
coworking is a community.

A community of people that

share ideas, interests and passion,

and once we come together,

we actually create this space
where we work together

and because we all bring a bit of
our individual soul and character,

coworking spaces are places
with a lot of soul.

So now there're 3,000 spaces
worldwide and growing.

But, there's a handful in town

and, there's one in Chiang Mai Pun Space.

But I’d like to see this be everywhere

as common as coffee shops

and so common that our new entrepreneurs,

creatives, freelancers, innovators

and changemakers

work out of these spaces
and are supported

and are nurtured and
become more successful,

allowing us to bring in,

you know, more interested people

who see now that this...
their lifestyle is possible,

this career is possible,

working out of these spaces

and are well-supported and

and once they join the community,
the community grows.

And I really love to end this
with one really simple message:

coworking spaces are the communities

that bring the cooperative

and collaborative cultures back to

our cities, our communities, our society,

and if we can help to

foster more coworking spaces

to be everywhere,

we will have many more spaces

with a soul across the cities

and that will lead to a rise

in the quality of life in our cities.

So I'd like to urge all of you

to join our movement,

to work out of a coworking space
from time to time,

to support the ideas, people, projects

that grow out of this space,

and also to… maybe even decide to

open, operate or invest in one.

Because if we cowork together,

we can create a better Thailand

and a better world.

Thank you very much

(Applause)