‘How do you do this in PHP or MySQL?’ and get immediate help. People in the space have hired other people in the space to do contract jobs for them. That’s what coworking is all about.”
I’m not sure whether a coworking environment like pariSoma right for me; unlike Jean-Paul Sartre, I tend to have more trouble writing when there’s a lot of activity going on around me. But one thing is for sure: in the new building, pariSoma members will have a lot more room to spread out and perhaps hole up in a quiet corner. They’ll also have additional lodging options—private offices accommodating two to six people, for $1,035 to $2,000 per month. There are a couple of big conference rooms, and three whole bathrooms (compared to the single one at 1436 Howard). There might even be room for a ping pong table.
Moving to a nicer space with more amenities is probably a necessity for pariSoma, given that it has a lot more competition than it used to: in 2010 alone, I/O Ventures, Nextspace, AngelPad, KickLabs, SOMAcentral, Founders Den, and The Hub all popped up within a mile or two. Nachtigal doesn’t seem worried about filling up the new space—in fact, several new clients, including Papaya Mobile, Work4Labs, Proton Radio, and Chugulu, are just waiting for the March 1 move to begin their memberships. And Nachtigal says faberNovel has plans to clone pariSoma in more cities over the next 12 to 24 months. For pariSoma, he says, the coworking explosion in SoMa “was just validation that there’s definitely a big market for this—especially here, but in lots of cities.”
