a post office across the street. As for divvying up the actual working space, Rowe says negotiations about where each individual users sets up camp and who gets access to the conference rooms will be left up to the tenants.
Limiting the rent to $250 per month “is perhaps our biggest accomplishment,” Rowe said yesterday in a note to reporters. “I’m not aware of a similar service in the area, certainly not in a downtown prime location, that approaches this price-point, let alone in a professionally managed environment. I believe we can operate a sustainable business at this price point. If that proves to be the case, C3 may represent a set of innovations that permanently lowers the cost to become an entrepreneur.”
C3 should be a bustling place by summertime. Harvard Business School has reserved space for students working on startups over the summer with support from HBS’s Rock Entrepreneurial Fellowships and John F. Lebor Family Entrepreneurial Fellowships, and both the MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition and the MIT Energy Prize will provide C3 space to this year’s finalists, who will be announced next week. That means 10 MIT-bred companies will be doing business from the co-working space for three to six months.
Sombit Mishra, managing director of the MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition, says the C3 office space is an important part of the prize package. “We see this relationship as exceptionally valuable because the Cambridge Innovation Center (CIC) not only provides participants with flexible, cost-saving options to incubate companies, but also gives them unique access to the most impressive mix of entrepreneurs in New England,” Mishra tells Xconomy. “We are proud of our partnership with CIC and look forward to working with Tim and his team to help launch the next wave of promising $100K startups.”
“We’re especially pleased that student groups from both Harvard and MIT will be amongst our first users of the space this summer,” Rowe says. “It should be a great mix.”
MassChallenge, an organization trying to raise $25 million for a venture fund to support startups in information technology, life sciences, clean energy, and social entrepreneurship, has also set up shop at C3.
