some of its members are working on fun side projects that they wouldn’t describe as work, and also because people associate coworking spaces with startups. “We want to be more inclusive of a large swath of society,” he says.
Walk into your neighborhood Cove, and you might see a lawyer doing some paperwork between meetings, a graduate student writing a paper, or, yes, a small team working on their startup. If you have business that day in another part of town, you can pop into a different Cove space because your membership gives you access to all of its locations.
One thing that could help set Cove apart from the crowd of shared-office options is its efforts to foster community among its members. Cove’s app allows users to see who has checked into each location, and it also has a social networking component that allows members to message each other. Furthermore, the company hosts events to encourage camaraderie, such as gatherings to pitch ideas and group outings to see local theater performances, Segal says.
“When you wrap everything together, it’s a different type of experience,” he says.
Segal declines to share membership numbers or financials for Cove, which has raised nearly $3 million from investors since its founding two years ago. But he says Cove has gotten a “really good response in Boston” and is continuing to expand in Washington, DC, with plans to grow from eight spaces to 10 there.
It won’t happen overnight, but the goal is to have a similar footprint in Boston, Segal says.
“We’re definitely a young business,” he says. “We’re looking to see where the demand is.”
