Coworking is regional affair in Greater Minnesota

Far from the big names such as Industrious and WeWork, Greater Minnesota coworking providers are finding ways to make smaller communities and greater distances work for them.

From Winona to Moorhead, small local coworking outfits, many sponsored by local governments or nonprofit groups, are meeting the demand for flexible work space. And while they don’t have access to the kinds of resources or networks available to larger players, entrepreneurs and community leaders have other tools at their disposal.

Austin Community Growth Ventures, parent organization of Austin’s Launch Coworking Space, is rolling out a southern Minnesota angel investing network that Sean Williams, director of Launch, hopes will serve as a springboard for new entrepreneurship.

“[Austin Area Angels] comes from seeing the need here in town to kind of formalize a group of investors and then to broaden our educational offerings,” Williams said in an interview, adding the program will include programs for people interested in becoming investors in Austin’s startup ecosystem.

Austin’s angel program, which will have its first investor informational meetings in March, is just one way outstate coworking leaders are tapping their local networks. The Greater Minnesota Coworking Passport, announced last week, aims to stitch together six coworking centers across southern Minnesota for coworking users on the road.

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(Submitted photo: CoStar Group)

(Submitted photo: CoStar Group)

(Submitted photo: CoStar Group)

Workers can buy a $99 punch card, good for five stops at the other locations, or a $250 monthly pass for unlimited access during drop-in hours, as well as upgrade options for current members. The passport grows from a long-standing desire to increase collaboration between the regions coworkers, said Stephanie Braun, director at Mogwai Collaborative in Mankato.

“I think it’s an important gesture that we coworking directors come together to collaborate like this — to not only offer our entrepreneurs productive and professional working environments in a number of locations, but to also inspire more collaboration between the entrepreneurs themselves, and help jump-start our region’s innovations in the process,” Braun said in a press release.

In addition to Mogwai and Austin’s Launch Coworking, the passport program covers Collider Coworking in Rochester, Pi-Co.Works in Pine Island, Red Wing Ignite in Red Wing and The Garage Cowork Space in Winona.

Apiary Coworking in St. Cloud isn’t a part of any such coworking network yet — it’s only been open for a few weeks — but founder Jon Hicks thinks a regional view might be even more important for coworking in small communities than in big cities. A former commercial appraiser in Minneapolis, Hicks sees a client base with a greater number of remote workers for larger companies than might be the case in the North Loop.

“It’s not necessarily like the startup company or the tech company that’s looking to grow and that’s going to grow exponentially, and that needs to very quickly go from one office to five offices,” Hicks said in an interview.

Many of these remote workers might be in a sales role or similar position that involves covering a lot of area, and partnerships between coworking providers can be an attractive way to do that, he said.

“Maybe that company that has two three people and they’re coming through our area, one person at a time, maybe a couple days a week at a time,” Hicks said. “They could share one office instead of three offices for three people. And maybe those same three people are in Fergus Falls, or Alexandria.”

In Greater Minnesota, without ready access to an entire metropolitan area’s talent and capital, coworking can succeed by relying on the strength of social networks and partnerships formed in smaller communities. That’s the lesson Williams takes from the passport network, which he hopes will expand to other cities and, maybe eventually, into the metro.

“It’s very much in our blood to come up with programs like this and make stuff work,” he said. “I don’t know if you know how expandable this is beyond this region, but the fact that we all knew each other and we’re working together on programs and collaborating already, definitely lowered the threshold for making this happen.”

Related:

The Twin Cities’ Coworking Scene