Co-working spaces across Taiwan provide comfortable and cooperative environments for freelancers and burgeoning entrepreneurs.
The number of people in Taiwan who work remotely for major employers is minuscule compared to the U.S. or the U.K., but the country does have a growing cohort of freelancers and self-employed specialists who see no reason to rent or equip a conventional office. Many of the latter work from home, but some take advantage of a type of establishment that did not exist before the internet age: the co-working space.
Unlike in conventional offices, those who toil in co-working spaces seldom share employers or even similar goals. They also have very different reasons for paying the membership fees that entitle them to sit there all day—and maybe all night—making the most of the ultrafast Wi-Fi.
Some do it because they find the atmosphere motivational. “Seeing other people working hard helps me concentrate on what I need to do,” said Marvin Kuo (郭明財), a software coder and regular at Tsohuespace in southern Taiwan’s Kaohsiung City. “If I stayed at home, I’d waste half the day watching movies.”
Freelancers whose home environment is conducive to productivity are sometimes attracted to co-working spaces because they want to clearly separate their work from their free time. Still others hope to network with people whose skills complement their own. This kind of cross-pollination is one of the goals of SD Coworking Plaza in Taipei City.
The facility currently has 10 regular users, and three or four others who come occasionally. “We’ve financial specialists, bloggers, programmers, a manga artist, startup owners and e-traders,” said Tsai Yi-ting (蔡宜廷), one of the three co-owners. “We aim to increase the variety of our co-workers to make cooperation and creativity among members more likely.”
SD Coworking Plaza is accessible to members 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It also offers ergonomic work chairs, unlimited coffee and tea, a microwave and oven, as well as lockers and an en suite room that members can rent when they need to stay overnight. “We’ve invested around NT$2 million [US$62,895], but we feel it’s worth it when our members say, ‘This is the kind of place we dreamed about for so long,’” Tsai said.
Happen, a co-working space in central Taiwan’s Taichung City, has had 82 members since opening in November 2013. (Photo courtesy of Happen)
Fostering Exchanges
Like their counterparts at SD, the founders of Happen in central Taiwan’s Taichung City wanted to create a platform that could encourage collaboration. “Happen is a space where people can exchange ideas and professional skills,” explained Sandra Chan (詹怡嘉), project manager at the establishment.
Founded in November 2013, the co-working space occupies the first and second floors of a 70-year-old house in the heart of the municipality. “As well as gadgets like a printer and scanner, we have a shared kitchen so people can prepare their own drinks and snacks, a tatami area where they can take a nap, and shower facilities,” Chan said. Tatami is a type of Japanese-style straw mat.
According to Chan, satisfying the legal and licensing requirements for co-working spaces was not difficult. “We’re treated the same way as rented offices, coffee shops and event venues. We’ve passed the fire safety inspection, and we have insurance.”
Afternoons are when Happen is busiest, but it is possible to buy a “workaholic” membership, which allows access 24/7. Conventional members are restricted to Happen’s regular hours of 9 a.m. to 7 p.m., Monday to Friday. “We’ve had 82 co-worker members since we opened,” the project manager said. “Most of them are doing design or engineering work, or programming or online marketing.”
Recently, Happen has been collaborating with the Taichung City Government to assist startups. “We’ve expanded our business model to include projects that focus on local culture, and to incubate startups,” Chan said. “We’ve incubated 25 teams over the last two years. Most of them are businesses focused on local culture, or social innovators.”
Uniting Entrepreneurs
In Kaohsiung, the local government has played a more direct role in the establishment of co-working facilities, overseeing the transformation of an abandoned public retail market into a base for entrepreneurship and innovation called Digital Art Kaohsiung United Office (DAKUO).
Emma Huang (黃欣婷), executive secretary of the Kaohsiung City Government’s Economic Development Bureau and the official in charge of DAKUO, describes it as “a platform for digital and cultural industries to exchange information with young talent and entrepreneurs, and a facility that not only reduces barriers to entry, but can also accompany young entrepreneurs at the start of their journey.”
Launched in November 2012, DAKUO initially occupied the third floor of the building in the city’s Yancheng District. It has since expanded and now spans around 9,900 square meters. “Recently, DAKUO has been hosting 15 to 20 events each month. These are designed to stimulate creativity and share business knowledge,” Huang said.
The main portion of the premises is used to incubate digital content enterprises. According to the executive secretary, the office has helped bring 35 companies employing more than 600 people to the area. The site is subsidized by the city government, but companies and individuals still have to pay for space. Rent costs NT$60 (US$1.90) per square meter per month in the first year, NT$73 (US$2.30) in the second year and NT$86 (US$2.70) in the third.
One section of DAKUO, covering around 400 square meters, has been designated a co-working space for young entrepreneurs and freelancers. Access costs NT$1,000 (US$31.45) per person per month.
Impact Hub Taipei regularly hosts a variety of events ranging from workshops and panel discussions to marketing presentations. (Photos courtesy of Impact Hub Taipei)
Social Innovation
Many of Taiwan’s co-working spaces have aspirations beyond stimulating economic growth. Among these is Impact Hub Taipei, linked through a Vienna-based association to the original Impact Hub, established in London in 2005, and approximately 100 others spread throughout the world.
“Our core values are sustainability, social innovation, and the sharing economy,” said Impact Hub Taipei co-founder and chief operating officer Oliver Chang (張士庭). “We aim to support a local community of entrepreneurs or impact makers to do good through business.”
The facility currently has around 30 members. “Every day it’s quite bustling,” Chang said. “We have members from Canada, France, the U.S. and Korea, as well as Taiwan.”
It also caters to professionals on short or medium-term stays in the city. “We offer a range of day passes. We sometimes customize the package for foreign entrepreneurs planning to stay longer,” he explained. “Our Hub has been visited by people from over 20 countries, and over 30,000 people have attended our events.”
Impact Hub Taipei’s current home is around 135 square meters, but it will quadruple its size in the first quarter of 2017 when it expands to a second location. “After the expansion, we expect to provide more educational programs like mentorships, coaching, workshops and incubation,” the co-founder said. “We want to house everything under one roof—funding, mentors and so on—so entrepreneurs can focus on their business and their impact.”
Hackers and Makers
Information technology has long been a mainstay of Taiwan’s economy, and today roughly a quarter of the country’s university students are majoring in some kind of engineering. The hacker and maker subcultures are thriving, and about a dozen venues organized along community-oriented, noncommercial maker principles have popped up.
Taipei Hackerspace is unique among them in being self-funded and run along “near-anarchist” principles, said Kai Carver, a U.S. citizen raised mainly in France and member of the space’s collective management team since it was established in 2013. The facility fills a 130-square-meter apartment and the roof area above it. It further differs from many co-working spaces in that it is registered as a not-for-profit social organization.
Rather than helping individuals develop businesses, it aims to encourage innovation and the sharing of technology and information. “It’s a very inspiring place where you can meet a lot of like-minded people and learn a lot about both computer hardware and software,” said Carver, a software engineer currently employed remotely by a Shanghai-based startup.
In 2014, the site was mentioned in local and international news reports when designers working with National Taiwan University Veterinary Hospital engineered a customized leg brace for an injured duck and manufactured the orthotic using a 3-D printer at Hackerspace. The duck, which had undergone surgery after being attacked by a dog, was then able to walk normally.
Carver explained that neither the 3-D printers nor much of the other hardware installed in Taipei Hackerspace were actually purchased by the organization. “What happens … is that people either donate items or bring them here for their own projects and let others use them,” he said.
Tech skills are also appreciated by those working in different fields. “Being among people like that is useful if I’m working on a scientific paper,” noted Hannah Tsai (蔡慧安), a 28-year-old translator who has used co-working spaces in Taiwan, Singapore and Australia.
“But compared to working at home by myself, there’s another difference I really like,” she added. “If I ask the whole room ‘Who wants to go for some noodles?’ I can be sure two or three hands will go up.”
______________________________
Steven Crook is the author of “Taiwan: The Bradt Travel Guide.”
Copyright © 2017 by Steven Crook