public relations folks, IT specialists, and even someone with a dream of starting a fitness company. They all work in one open room, so they can trade expertise and experience. “We were calling this a creative co-op at one point,” Shampine says.
WeWork Labs has pulled in some big-named sponsors already. They include advertising agency Jay Walter Thompson and Boxee. The sponsors are helping keep the desk-rental costs down, Shampine says, and allowing for perks like occasional food deliveries from Fresh Direct.
And WeWork Labs already has one marquis entrepreneur renting space there: Ryan Charles, the former head of Zagat’s mobile unit. He left Zagat and moved into WeWork Labs on its first day, Shampine reports, to work on Consmr—a new social-networking site where people can post reviews of consumer products like beverages and grocery brands.
Shampine doesn’t fashion himself a born evangelist for New York entrepreneurs, but he certainly has transformed himself into exactly that. He launched a Web site called We Are NY Tech, which posts personality profiles of startup execs. He also hosts poker games and ping pong tournaments for entrepreneurs—ensuring they’re intimate enough to foster camaraderie and idea-sharing. “If you go to a New York Tech meetup the biggest problem is there are 900 people there,” he says. “It’s not a good way to develop relationships.”
WeWork Labs is planning several more regular events—some of them clearly designed as support groups for struggling entrepreneurs. There will be a breakfast every other Wednesday, for example, where eight founders of startups can come and commiserate about problems they’re facing.
Shampine fine-tuned his evangelism skills at age 24, when he ran for town council in Palmyra, NJ. He lost by about 100 votes, he says, but he wouldn’t trade the experience for anything. “There I was, this introverted computer science major, going door-to-door, raising money, participating in debates,” he recalls. “I really had to sell myself.”
The Web site Business Insider called WeWorks labs the “preschool” of incubators shortly after it launched. When asked to respond, Shampine answers like a seasoned political pro: “No comment,” he says. But he doesn’t hold back in expressing his enthusiasm for his new pre-incubator. “It’s all about community,” he says.
